Young Social Innovators and Growth Project Description

Young Social Innovators (YSI) is a multidimensional social change programme designed to empower youth participation and create meaningful social change in schools, communities and society. It began in 2001 as pilot activities in 11 post-primary schools with 100 teenagers, and by 2020/21 it had grown to 187 participating institutions (schools and youth-serving organisations), engaging 5,386 young people registered as members of YSI project teams. These teams initially submitted 354 project outlines to YSI, of which 224 final reports were submitted on behalf of 125 organisations. Additionally, 23 schools participated in the Junior Cycle Action programme engaging approximately 995 young people, and 19 schools applied to participate in the Robotics for Good (R4G) programme involving 103 students. 

YSI also provides a range of support programmes for educator training, recognition of excellence, technical assistance, and promotion of youth-led social innovation. YSI has a presence in all four provinces and every county in the Republic of Ireland. Since its inception it has engaged with over 150,000 young people in over 600 schools and youth-serving organisations, with 1,768 cumulative educators trained, and 5,371 youth-led social innovation projects completed.

The Growth Project was formally initiated during 2020 as a systematic and long-term initiative to expand the reach of the Young Social Innovator programme. Previously, during the 2018/19 school year, YSI piloted a Local Community Networks Cluster approach to “upscaling” in Cork with support funding from the Tomar Trust. Six schools worked together in cluster groups facilitated by YSI with the aim of developing a regional approach to building and strengthening leadership in social innovation learning and practice in the region. The intent was to strengthen the capacity of school and local communities to address challenges and build a network of support for social innovation projects. Within the pilot, participating schools collaborated through Teach Meets to share information and learning and hosted local Community YSI Showcases to increase student engagement and teacher capability. These groups of schools, or clusters, were described as “Communities of Innovation”.

During a second phase of the pilot, during the 2019/20 school year, 7 post-primary schools in Cork City participated involving 224 students within the Senior Action Programme (including 2 DEIS Schools). A total of 12 projects were submitted from these schools. During this second pilot year, systems for staffing and scaling the approach in targeted areas in rural and urban Ireland were developed. 

Based on the results from piloting in Cork City, additional expansion funding was successfully sought from several governmental sources, including the Department of Education, the Department of Rural and Community Development, the Department of Social Protection (Dormant Accounts), and Dublin City Council. The stated goal was to bring YSI to 50% of second-level schools by 2023 through a three-year initiative. The proposal was to recruit 12 local YSI leaders who would adopt a regional development approach through the creation and support of area-based clusters of school communities, each consisting of an average of 5 individual schools. More specifically, the funding proposal stipulated that the local leaders would “…recruit the schools, create the clusters, provide training, build in-school capacity, facilitate shared learning and address local needs, both rural and urban.”

The Growth Project combines funding from a variety of sources to expand the reach of Young Social Innovators over a five-year period (2019-2024). Following a planning year, a step-wise process has occurred in which the project has sought to increase the numbers of young people Guides, schools and communities involved with social innovation to expand the network of schools and sites throughout Ireland.

Thus, in Year 1 of implementation (2020/21), YSI recruited 5 Local Leaders and one Regional Leader (Dublin City). This complement of local leaders was insufficient in number to fully cover all of the counties in Ireland, and concentrated effort in areas where YSI had the strongest presence (primarily in Leinster and Munster). As of the 2nd year of implementation (2021-22), ten regions encompassing all of the counties in the Republic of Ireland were targeted and staffed by a complement nine local leaders (described in a subsequent section).

The goal of the Growth Project is for social innovation programmes to be available in a majority of post-primary schools by 2024 and, within these schools, increasing the number of students who participate, embedding social innovation as part of the educational process.

The mechanism for this planned expansion is the deployment of a local (regional)  leader structure through which local efforts and capacity are supported, self-supporting and sustainable networks are created and enhanced, shared learning and reflective practice are encouraged, and peer support is available among schools, educators, and students. The “technology” for establishing the structures to support these goals and activities was created and extended based on the learning from the Tomar-supported Cork pilot project.

Expansion activities have occurred in an iterative fashion such that each region-based local leader recruits and support groups of schools, seeks to build networks of self-managing schools, and expands the number of participating students within each cluster. It is also envisioned that alumni students will help to strengthen a culture of engagement in social innovation over time.   

The Growth Project is led by Eileen Costello Rawat, a local leader recently appointed as Head of Education at YSI. It is also supported by other programme components within YSI (e.g., the Education Administrator, Communications Officer, Financial & Governance Management, and Research and Information Departments). There was some turnover and re-organisation within the initiative during 2021-22, but by early spring in 2022, ten discrete regions were delineated and these were staffed at years’ end by nine local leaders. Several leaders were new and these received extensive initial training and ongoing support.

The core expectation is that local leaders will engage grow youth-led social innovation through various complex and interrelated processes. These include school recruitment and engagement, relationship-building at several levels, assessing needs, mapping communities, making connections, supporting participants, fostering collaboration, advocating, communicating, messaging, and documenting progress (among others).

What continued to emerge in 2021-22, consistent with the prior year (see earlier interim report), is a set of ideas and strategies for promoting sustainable growth at the national level. The local leader team remains functional, capable and experienced as school-community developers, and is more fully integrated into ongoing YSI operations.