Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, chairperson and co-founder, Young Social Innovators, and Paul Ryan, external affairs director and chairman, Vodafone Ireland Foundation
The Irish youth organisation Young Social Innovators (YSI) is calling on young people to enter its 2012-2013 social innovation programme that has been launched today.
The Vodafone Ireland Foundation has also become a partner of the YSI social innovation programme, which is open to 15-18 year-olds in Ireland through schools and youth organisations.
The idea of the programme is to help empower young people with the skills and know-how to examine social problems and come up with solutions that will benefit people and communities.
Choosing a social issue they care about, teens will work in teams to research the issue and come up with ways to tackle it.
And YSI together with the Vodafone Ireland Foundation are on a mission to more than double the number of participants in the programme by building a network of 100,000 young social innovators by 2015.
Vodafone said it would be providing more than €400,000 in funding this year to YSI, as well as harnessing its employees and its technology to help upscale the YSI programme. Another aim is to create a new programme in 2013 that would be targeted at 16-24-year-olds.
“Change is needed. Ireland needs to be a fairer, more equitable society, a society where the economy serves the people rather than the other way around. We need fresh ideas and a new perspective on the problems facing society today because the current approaches are not working,” said Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, chairperson and co-founder, Young Social Innovators.
“Today, I am calling again on teachers and young people across Ireland and those working with them to get involved in Young Social Innovators and to make a positive impact on communities throughout Ireland.”
The closing date for entries is 30 September 2012.
