Background

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 initiated during 2020 as a systematic and long-term initiative to expand the reach of the Young Social Innovator programme. During the year 2018/19 school year, YSI had piloted a school clustering  approach to “upscaling” in Cork with support funding from the Tomar Trust. Six schools worked together and were 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 and to develop a pipeline of social innovation opportunities for students within schools. 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 led by young people. Within the pilot, participating schools collaborated through Teach Meets to share information and learning and hosted a local community YSI Showcase to increase visibility and recognition of student projects and social innovation education. The model drew from learning from “Communities of Excellence”, a whole school pilot initiative supporting social innovation developed by YSI. 

During a second phase of the Cork based 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 and funding was successfully sought from Tomar Trust matched by funding and support from the Department of Education. Further funds were successfully received from Cork City Council and Dublin City Council to expand youth- led social innovation in their regions. The stated goal of this new scaling project 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.”