‘The Positivity Pages,’ from Carrick On Suir, Tipperary has been named the overall national winner at the Aldi Foróige Youth Citizenship Awards this weekend.
Their Citizenship Project - wherein they started a monthly youth newspaper to spread positivity and awareness about minding your mental health - was chosen from over 220 social action projects developed by young people to change their communities for the better.
This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Youth Citizenship Programme, which was first run by Foróige in 1969. 2019 has been the biggest year for the programme ever, with over 14,000 young people taking part.
The young people of ‘The Positivity Pages’ were motivated to take action because of three tragedies in their town. They felt that young people are often surrounded by negativity through the media, in the community, through their own thoughts and online.
They started their own monthly newspaper to highlight the positive achievements of young people and to raise self-esteem, create a sense of belonging and build confidence in the abilities of their peers. The local newspaper picked up their Positivity, and incorporated their publication into the newspaper.
The group said ‘we learned that we can achieve anything if we really put our minds to it.’
More than 2,000 young people, representing every county in the Republic of Ireland, descended on the National Sports Campus to celebrate and showcase their community action projects at the Awards. 220 youth groups took part, having worked on Citizenship Projects focused on improving the entrants’ local communities in areas such as equality, homelessness, climate change, social inclusion, community events, mental health and culture.
Commenting at the Awards, Seán Campbell, CEO of Foróige said: “There’s a reason this programme has lasted fifty years; it works. It gives young people the opportunity to grow and learn, but perhaps even more importantly to get to know their community by being a leader in it.
“Year after year, attending these awards, I’m amazed by the ingenuity; integrity and grit of Foróige young people. It’s truly phenomenal how much they can achieve when they put their minds to a cause. The young people who entered the Aldi Foróige Youth Citizenship Awards this year invested over 82,000 hours in their community action projects and that’s something that we should be really proud of as a country."
