ECHO - HIFY SPECIAL EDITION ISSUE 15

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Issue 15: July 2012

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In this Edition of Echo we hear all about the great work of the LOFT LK’s Health Initiative for Young People Breaking Down Barriers project or HIFY as it has become affectionately known to its participants.

Enjoy!

Martin Keeney

Youth Information Officer

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Breaking Down Barriers Project SPECIAL EDITION Photos th u o Y r fo e v ti ia Coming Up? ’s News Health Init t a h W p U k Spea

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NEWS & VIEWS FROM THE YIC

WHATS NEW?

NEW TWIST TO PARTY IN THE PARK

Donegal Youth Service are working in partnership with Letterkenny Live festival this year to bring you Party in the Car Park on Saturday 18th August.

The best young talent from across the county will have the opportunity to play the big Letterkenny Live gig rig on Oliver Plunkett Road on the Saturday afternoon.

This event has been developed as a way of giving Letterkenny Live more of a festival feel, as the Donegal Youth Service will deliver their annual Party in The Park as part of the full weekend of activities during the Saturday.

Letterkenny Live Headline act Bressie, Aslan and The Kanye Tree will take to the stage later that evening.

Party in the Car Park is a real showcase for local young bands combined with a range of family fun activities and attracts upwards of 1000 young people each year. This year it has been renamed as Party in The Car Park and the youth service will have access to the full Letterkenny Live set up from 1.30pm to 5.30pm.

For more information on the Donegal Youth Service Party in the Car Park contact Letterkenny Youth Information Centre on 074-9129640.

PARTY IN THE CAR PARK LINE-UP

Andrew Tran Carr Leila Keeney Redwood Avenue Loose Bananas Geraldine & Debbie

Marli Kerr Jamaican Vampires The Capitol

Marli Kerr

Geraldine & Debbie Teddyballet

Jamaican Vampires

The Matthew Trainor Experience Joel Harkin Walk Through Fire

LEAVING CERT RESULTS HELPLINE FLYING THE COOP Letterkenny Youth Information Centre will provide a phone helpline for those receiving Leaving Cert results in August. Staff at the Port Road based centre will also be available for young people and parents to bring along any queries that may arise following students receiving their results. A 65-page booklet produced by the Roscommon Youth Information Centre, entitled “Flying the Coop�, will also be available full of advice including tenants rights, useful contacts and advice for those going on to study in Ireland, Northern Ireland or the UK.

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Leila Keeney

TMTE

YIC GROUP SET FOR GERMANY TRIP Letterkenny Youth Information Centre are currently preparing to send a group of young people to Germany for a Youth Exchange in August. The team will spend 10 days in the country along with young people from all over Europe, where they will be participating in a range or workshops and activities, with an emphasis on what it currently means to young people to be a part of the EU.

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WHATS BEENIN HAPPENING PARTY THE PARK We look back at some of our highlights over the past few months.

Apollo 6 did us proud at the Irish Youth Music Awards National Finals

DYS launched our Lets Talk About Sex week in some style

Our YIC Youth Media Group, Youth Drama Groups and Youth Action Group enjoyed a day’s paintballing recently

Our Lets Talk About Sex conference was a great success

The YIC team have been busy delivering Student Grant seminars all over the county

Bottom left: Loft Volunteer Paul enters the spirit of things at the HIFY Feel Good Friday event

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Cormac, Julia, Eoin & Marie help launch our Student Grant Seminars 2012

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HIFYPARTY SPECIAL EDITION IN THE PARK

HIFY PROJECT

What’s it all about?

Youth Mental Health). We researched the issues affecting young people and met with guest speakers from Reachout.com, the Donegal Rape Crisis Centre and the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Support Group in Letterkenny.

The skills and knowledge gained have been put to good use. Group members hosted an information day on support for young people to mark World Mental Health day in October and delivered a series of training sessions this spring. A relaxation day for group members was followed by the first of the training sessions, a workshop for adult youth leaders

Sometimes it’s hard to talk about mental health, sometimes we don’t know what to say or where to start, but talking is one of the most important things when it comes to protecting our mental health. In the spring of 2011 the members of the LOFT Youth Project’s HIFY team developed a proposal for a project to make it easier for young people to be able to discuss mental help and to access support in difficult times.

With the support of the Leargas Youth Initiative Fund, our group have been able to put our proposal into action and have enjoyed great learning along the way.

Over the past year our group of thirteen young people have researched opinions on mental health and the ways young people would like to learn about it. We named the project Breaking Down Barriers as w e felt the areas we could best tackle are the barriers to talking about mental health and the barriers to getting support in difficult times. We have taken part in workshops in understanding mental health, research skills, peer education training including a residential at mid term break and a mindfulness workshop with Headstrong (The National Centre for

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on mental health and ways of exploring mental health with young people.

The team then got to work on preparing our pack for training our peers. The work came together and culminated in a four day summer camp for teenagers in July 2012. Next on the agenda for the group was hosting a “Feel Good Friday” event to promote positive mental health. Throughout the Breaking Down Barriers project the group have collected our work and edited it together into a resource pack for youth groups, teachers and youth leaders to use as a tool for mental health education and promotion.

The resource pack will be launched at a celebration night in the Letterkenny Regional Cultural Centre and will then be available from Breaking Down Barriers, LOFT Youth Project, 16 – 18 Port Road, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal (email loftstaff@gmail.com).

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PARTY IN THE PARK HIFY SPECIAL EDITION

ABOUT BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS

by Emma Gallagher (HIFY Group)

Following a course on youth health a group of us decided to work on a mental health project. When we started the Breaking Down Barriers project, our goal was to promote mental health. We wanted to show people how to take care of their mental health and where to go for support if they were having a difficult time. We had a lot of ideas but needed money to make them happen. We filled out an application to Leargas for the Youth Initiative Scheme and then waited nervously to hear if the application was successful. When we got the news we were delighted. We have done a lot in the last year. We had information events, had guest speakers and hosted a summer camp. We have worked hard to get the word out about mental health we are even doing or own resources pack to show people what we did and how we did it so that more projects on youth mental health can happen.

We hope the packs will be used in schools and youth centres to help young people explore and understand mental health.

FEEL GOOD FRIDAY

by Aaron Shaw (HIFY Group)

Our research and the results of the survey among young people our age showed that having time to talk about positive mental health is also really important. Feel Good Friday was an event set up by the HIFY group to promote a positive feeling to everyone that day. It was an opportunity to talk about mental health but also to make a day for young people to have good fun with their friends. We also wanted to help young people know where to go for support if they needed it.

We decorated the youth cafĂŠ, had performers including a magician, singers and a band. Members of our group did face painting and we had food for everyone attending. Many people came to the LOFT and stayed because of the activities, the day was a great success with attendance far more than we expected.

There was a great atmosphere, everyone could just lay back, chill and have fun as it was a safe and comfortable environment.

We would like to say a big thank you to all who helped to make the day such a success. The organisations who supported, the volunteers, performers, entertainers and all who came to take part in the activities.

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HIFY PROJECT!

MAKE A RIPPLE CAMPAIGN

The FEEL GOOD FRIDAY event was also an opportunity to educate people about mental health. Another activity that was undertaken on the day of the event was the setting up of the “Make a Ripple” booth. Make a Ripple is a project set up by the See Change organisation. Kahlil Thompson Coyle, campaign manager with See Change explained “See Change recognises that real change happens at community level. Sharing real stories is the only way to change minds about mental health problems and end stigma, by making ripples from one person to the next until a large community of people are touched by this message and feel that they can be open and positive about their own and others’ mental health.”

She also went on to say “we are delighted to see the young people of the LOFT Youth Project and Health Café becoming the custodians of the stories shared as part of See Change’s Make a Ripple movement and spearheading open and honest discussion of mental health problems in Donegal.”

The #makearipple project is simple, and anyone can do it. All you have to do is share your story or your views on mental health or mental issues. You don’t need to have a mental issue to give your opinion on them. It was set up to give the perspective of on the issue and to share experiences. Some of the Ripples already added to the campaign were displayed in the centre for the day, including this one which I felt was very powerful: “Mary: The person you’re sitting beside on the bus, the person you meet that you think is absolutely fine and hasn’t a care in the world, could be suffering very deeply inside. That was me.”

Participants in the LOFT contributed to the campaign my making our own ripples. An example of one is “mental health is as important as physical. It needs to be monitored as much and affects you as much, if not more.”

NOTE TO SELF

As part of Feel Good Friday Nigel from Inspire Ireland came to the LOFT with the Note to Self booth. This is an initiative through which people can write a positive message to themselves on a ReachOut.com ‘Note to self’ postcard. ReachOut.com will then stamp and mail the postcard to you to receive at a future date. As well as the positive feeling generated by this activity, it’s also a great way to spread the work of the website ReachOut.com. ReachOut.com is a service dedicated to taking the mystery out of mental health.

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Their aim is to provide quality assured mental health information and inspiring real life stories by young people to help other young people get through tough times. ReachOut. com also provides information about other services that can help people deal with mental health problems.

ReachOut.com is run by the Inspire Ireland Foundation which is a not for profit, non government registered charity.

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HIFY PARTICIPANTS

Hear from those who took part

RUTH GALLAGHER

Ruth tells all about her experience of being a member of the HIFY group.

Being in HIFY and being a part of the Breaking Down Barriers project was an amazing experience. Right from the beginning the aim of HIFY was to educate ourselves and those around us and make a difference by raising awareness on mental health.

I definitely think we achieved this goal, with special thanks to Léargas who generously funded the project.

With their help our goals became achievable.

SUMMER CAMP

Katie Harley tells about her experience of helping organise the HIFY summer camp.

From the 3rd to the 7th of July our HIFY group went to the next level of our Breaking Down Barriers project and hosted a summer camp for young people aged between 12 and 17. The objectives of our camp was to teach our peers about mental health and hopefully break down stereotypes and stigmas. The camp gave young people from different aspects of life chance to intertwine and meet new people and learn more about our core theme mental health. Starting the camp the young people and their parents registered in the drop in centre in the LOFT. We then started to help everyone settle in, we had games and ice-breakers to get the know the group.

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Before HIFY I can honestly say that I

Through being in HIFY, and taking on

didn’t have the same outlook on

the breaking down barriers project,

mental health as I do now. I know a

I’ve made some of my best friends and

lot more and understand it a lot

met some wonderful people. It’s given

better. I think it’s important that

me something to work towards for the

people should understand it to reduce

year and it’s given me a huge sense

the stigma in our society and with this

of self accomplishment to see people

thought in mind we took on the

benefit from the awareness that we

breaking down barriers project. We

have raised. We made a change and

spread awareness through so many

had loads of craic along the way, and

events and projects.

hopefully the people who got involved in everything we’ve organized have

One of the highlights for me was the

had fun as well as learning too. I’m

residential in Corrymeela, Co. Antrim,

truly grateful for the opportunity that

where we did a peer education and

Léargas and this project has given

teambuilding course. We learned how

us, it’s been an experience I’ll never

to deliver presentations and facilitate

forget.

group work sessions.

The main aim for the first day was for everyone to have fun and get to know each other a bit. People mixed well and no one was left on their own. The evaluation described our activities as “well organised “and “not boring”. We included a lot of art as a way of exploring what is good for your mental health and what can harm it. One of the activities which included describing what they thought good mental health was through drawing a poster to promote positive mental health. They showed pictures of smiling faces, music ,friendships and lots of colours which shows that they do have a good idea of what was good for their mental health.

One of the participants told me that she thoughts “the camp was well structured and that it didn’t feel like teaching more just having fun but learning at the same time.” The workshops were split up with activities including a trip to Turfnsurf surfing school in Bundoran and Gartan adventure centre where the group participated

in activities such as wall climbing surfing and archery.

At the end of the camp it was sad but from the evaluation showed to be very fun and effective, 100% of people reported they enjoyed the camp as did they learn about mental and emotional health during this camp. 93% of people felt that they know more about what can help/hinder mental health and again 93% learned about places young people can go for support when they are having difficult times.

I really enjoyed facilitating the summer camp, it was good fun and we had a great turnout, more than expected. The participants got really involved and didn’t treat us like teachers. I am much more confident working with groups now and have even volunteered to do art classes in the LOFT later in the summer.

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YIC LETTERKENNY SERVICES & PROGRAMMES

STUDENT TRAVEL CARD Letterkenny Youth Information Centre is an agent for the Student Travel Card. We can process your card for you in the centre. See www.studenttravelcard.ie for more details on the discounts on offer.

EURODESK Thinking of travelling, working or volunteering in Europe. Letterkenny YIC are your local Eurodesk Relay. We have access to lots of European Information so give us a call today.

WEEKLY ACCOMMODATION & EMPLOYMENT LIST Our weekly employment and accommodation list for Letterkenny can now be accessed online. See www.donegalyouthservice.ie/yic for more details.

FACEBOOK We are on Facebook. Just search “Letterkenny YIC” or “Loft LK” and add us for regular updates and info.

YOUTH ACTION GROUP The Youth Action Group meets on Thursday evenings and is works on projects such as setting up Party in the Car Park begin work on planning this year’s Party in the Park. Talk to John Ruddy now to get involved.

OUTREACH IN SCHOOLS Letterkenny YIC are reguarly providing outreach in different schools across the town and county. We offer workshops in a range of areas including peer mentoring, school council training, internet safety workshops, study skills & much more. Contact the centre if you feel we could be of benefit to your school.

DROP IN HOURS The YIC drop in continues to open from 12pm until 6pm Monday to Thursday, while we are open to 5pm on Fridays. The Loft drop-in remains open until 8pm on Wednesday and Thursdays and opens from 5-10pm on Fridays, as well as 2-8pm on Saturdays.

STUDENT GRANT CONSULTATION All Student Grant applications now have to be filled out online, with the deadline being the 31st August. Letterkenny YIC can help you find out info about the student grant and help you fill out your application. Talk to a member of staff now.

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WHAT’S COMING UP?

LOFT LK

The Letterkenny Youth Project and Health Café is managed by Donegal Youth Service and Foróige and funded by the Health Service Executive North West Area. The Loft LK Summer programme began at the end of June but there are still a number of exciting weeks coming up: Art & Music Project (AMP) 31st July – 3rd Aug (Ages 12-18) Would you like to dance? Try some new art or music techniques or develop your existing skills? with workshops in DJ skills, Grafitti, spoken word, dance (including hip hop, funk fusion, contemporary and jazz) physical theatre, photography and much more. AMP will be a great opportunity to let your creative side shine. 30 euro OUTDOOR WEEK 7th - 10th August (ages 15 - 17) Not going away this year but still want to have some great summer experiences? This week we are going spend 98% outside taking part in fun packed activities, challenges and learning a bit about our nature and how to survive in the wild. Don’t forget; there is no such thing as bad weather just bad clothing... so sign up and show us how tough you really are!

ITS A SMALL WORLD 14th – 17th Aug (Ages 13 – 16) Learn skills from around the world and combine these with a closer look at our local community. We will also be marking National Heritage Week. Activities include sport, music, art and more.

MULTI-ACTIVITY WEEK 21st – 24th Aug (Ages 12 – 18) This week will be packed with activities, challenges, competitions and more with a big day out to round off the summer holidays.

CONTACT DETAILS Letterkenny YIC

Donegal Youth Service 16-18 Port Road, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal Tel 0749129640 yicletterkenny@donegalyouthservice.ie www.donegalyouthservice.ie/yic

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