The Growth Project
Young Social Innovators (YSI) is a multidimensional Social Innovation Education (SIE) programme designed to empower youth-led social innovation and promote meaningful social change in schools, communities and society. 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.
YSI began in 2001 as a pilot project in 11 post-primary schools with 100 teenagers. Annually, YSI now engages an average of approximately 200 participating institutions (schools and youth-serving organisations). In 2020/21, for example, 5,386 young people registered as members of YSI project teams in the Social Innovation Action Programme, Senior Cycle. 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 Social Innovation Action Programme, Junior Cycle engaging approximately 995 young people.
YSI also provides a range of offerings to educators in support of its programmes including training, certification, recognition of fidelity, online and phone support, recognition of excellence for schools, technical assistance, and promotion of youth-led social innovation.
The Growth Project
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. The intended outcomes for the effort are:
“GOAL: to create a country where youth-led social innovation becomes pervasive, part of the culture of schools and has a greater impact on society. In so doing we are helping to develop key learning skills for young people and promote values and understanding around sustainable development, human rights, democracy and inclusion as well as helping to nurture youth entrepreneurship, innovation, wellbeing, voice and participation at local and national levels.”
YOUTH: our aim is that social innovation education will result in engaged and connected youth who are using their voice and being listened to.
EDUCATION: our aim is to have sustained deliberate investment in social innovation education within post primary schools, educators and students demonstrating learning outcomes and value added to school communities and educator training…an enhanced learning environment where innovation, entrepreneurship, social justice, youth voice and participation is celebrated.
SOCIETY: our aim is to enhance our participatory democracy where young people know what they do and don’t do matters. A population capacity around social change and innovation; a resilient population able to collaborate and address the most significant challenges of our time.” [1]
The current operational goal of the Growth Project is for social innovation programmes to be available in a majority of post-primary schools by 2024/25 and, within these schools, to increase the number of students who participate, embedding social innovation as part of the educational process.
A primary 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.
[1] From progress report submitted to Tomar Trust
Relevance of the Growth Project
Social Innovation Education (SIE) emphases engaging young people through experiential learning strategies. It holds the potential to facilitate transformational change in teaching and learning. In effect, YSI offerings provide an evidence-based approach in support of numerous government agency policies such as educational learning outcomes, health and wellbeing goals for children and youth, citizenship and community participation, climate action, Sustainable Development Goals, emerging junior and senior cycle curricula, and social entrepreneurship.
SIE is endorsed and validated by the Programme for Government 2020 which states: “support the work of Young Social Innovators to assist young people to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath in Ireland, to address issues facing their communities and the country as a whole, and to harness their energy, skills and talent” and to “expand access to social innovation programmes to all post primary schools.”
On 28th June 2022, YSI presented to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education, Higher Education, Science and Research. Recommendations were made to the Committee that social innovation education be rolled out to all post primary and primary schools in Ireland. This recommendation was endorsed by the Committee, which sent a letter to the Minister of Education. YSI is seeking a meeting with the Minister to discuss how this might be done.
Historical development
The Growth Project was formally initiated during 2020 as a systematic and long-term initiative to expand the reach of the Young Social Innovator programmes and what has become known as social innovation learning and practice or social innovation education. 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 YSI Local Community Showcases to increase student engagement, teacher capability and local visibility. 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 Social Innovation Action Programme, Senior Cycle (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. YSI developed a 3-to-5-year plan to expand its work and further develop an area-based model to grow and embed youth-led social innovation around Ireland. It approached Tomar Trust with this idea and received strong support. 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.” Tomar Trust committed 50% funding of the plan to end 2025 on condition of securing matching funding from the Department of Education. The Department agreed to come on board and committed to an initial 3-year term of funding.
The Growth Project benefits from the existing work and funding of YSI. Funding from a variety of other public sources include the Department of Rural and Community Development, Dormant Accounts Funds, Pobal, the Department of Social Protection, HSE, Department of Children and Youth Affairs (*now known as the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth), Cork and Dublin City Councils. The new investment by Tomar Trust and Department of Education, focussing on growth and area development, also benefited the existing core work of YSI. Following a planning year, a stepwise process occurred in which the project sought to increase the numbers of young people, YSI Guides, schools, communities and other organisations involved with supporting youth led social innovation and the expansion of the network of schools and sites throughout Ireland.
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 the counties in the Republic of Ireland were targeted and staffed by a complement of nine local leaders.
Strategies for Growth
As described previously, the goal of the Growth Project is for social innovation programmes to be available on an on-going basis in a majority of post-primary schools by 2024/25 and, within these schools, to increase the number of and age range of students who participate, embedding social innovation as part of the educational process. A core 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 occurred in an iterative fashion such that each 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.
During 2021/22 the Growth Project was led by Eileen Costello Rawat, a member of the original local leader team who has been recently appointed as Head of Education at YSI. It is also supported by other programme components within YSI (e.g., the Social Innovation Programme Coordinator, the Learning and Practice Specialist, Education Administrator, Communications Officer, Financial & Governance Management, and Researcher). 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 and 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 evaluation report[2]), 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.
[2] https://reacheval.com/ysi-growth-project-report-main (PW: Solution.131518)
Organisational Accomplishments in Support of the Growth Project
During the past two years, partly as a function of the Growth Project:
15,218 students participated in YSI programmes (Senior, Junior & Workshops);
YSI on-boarded 67 new schools in 21/22 and 72 new schools in 20/21 (relative to the prior year);
YSI retained 142 schools in 21/22 and 129 schools were retained in 20/21 (relative to the prior year;
YSI provided estimated classroom time of 14,280 hrs/595 classroom days for 357 senior teams (40 hrs per team/senior and 20 hrs/ junior) and 2,640 hrs/ 110 days for junior cycle);
In 2021/22 YSI Local Leaders provided 161 hours of workshops to 2,886 students.
YSI grew in support of the Growth Project by increasing school offerings to create a developmental pipeline of accessible social innovation programmes. The following developments are highlighted below:
established 2 major programmes in primary schools;
translated programme into Irish for na Gaelscoileanna. (2022/23);
piloted a primary school programme (YSI Design for Change)
worked with City of Dublin Education training Board (CDETB) to finalise a QQI Level 4 programme for more marginalised young people (to be rolled out 2022/23);
offered numerous “taster” workshops: Themes around Community Mapping, Design Thinking and Sustainable Development Goals, Social Innovation Student Councils;.
developed new resources around an accessible online DIY YSI with enterprise and entrepreneurial learning and practice. (roll out 22/23);
offered a Regional Speak Out Tour of events around Ireland inviting all senior teams to tell their story and garner support;
designed a digital platform to give young people direct access to YSI and youth-led social innovation opportunities.
YSI also grew during this period by enhancing several organisational capacities in support of the Growth Project, including (but not limited to):
completed a comprehensive overhaul and enhancement of IT systems, enabling more robust information-gathering, data exploration and analytics, flexible reporting, and data management;
improved outcome measurement through the development and validation of student and educator surveys;
initiated evaluation research on preliminary survey data from both instruments and began the process of more extensive deployment during 2022-23;
completed research on social innovation and well-being in collaboration with UCD, confirming that youth voice was an enabler of student experience of wellbeing;
completed a broad research agenda with UCD demonstrating the impact of social innovation education on students and teachers.
Impact of the Growth Project on YSI as an Organisation
Investment of funding from the Department of Education and Science and the Tomar Trust served to transform YSI from a small but dynamic organisation into a more structured and sophisticated operational network of integrated national, regional and local components. These include a professional support and implementation infrastructure, quality assurance processes, improved systems of reporting and accountability, and an evidence-generating research and evaluation team that delivers timely management-focused information. Through these changes, the organisation has become more ready and capable to implement youth engagement, youth voice and youth-led social innovation to a greater scale. Some of the accomplishments associated with these efforts, as highlighted by its leaders, include:
YSI has revised its organisation structure over the past three years, creating a senior leadership team, specialist roles, a local leader team, and greater clarity in governance functions;
YSI has extensively broadened and strengthened its information gathering and dissemination functions;
YSI has developed its Innovation and Impact function bringing in expertise in research and evaluation and increased its work in delivery of new offerings to young people and educators
YSI has strengthened its use of digital technology enabling more online events at national and local level and the development of a new digital platform for youth access in the coming year;
YSI is now a national body with local presence in all counties in the republic. Our team of leaders, 9, reach into each county and are building school groups and local support networks comprising public, community, academic and business sector support.
Improved information and monitoring systems facilitate improved programme analytics which enhance understanding and communication, both internally and with government and other stakeholders;
Improved and more thoroughly validated systems of performance measurement and metric to gauge progress are available in collaboration with researchers at UCD and REACH Evaluation.
Current evaluation foci (2021/22) include a county-level analysis of growth-related outcome data and an exploration of qualitative aspects of local leader interactions with with respect to the activation of youth, amplification of youth voice, the integration of young people’s ideas and thinking on local services and policies; and the strengthening of networks, connections, and capacity. This is the content of the present report.
[1] From progress report submitted to Tomar Trust
[2] https://reacheval.com/ysi-growth-project-report-main (PW: Solution.131518)