Young Social Innovators Elevate 2018
Today TBF founder and CEO Aisling Hurley attended the Young Social Innovators (YSI) at LinkedIn Head Office in Grand Canal Dock, Dublin. Being a digital marketing agency located outside ‘the pale’, we are always delighted to head to the big smoke and this event is very close to our hearts. The Young Social Innovators bring a team of specialists from different areas on the business world together as part of an event that takes place throughout October. Some of these specialists work in areas such as funding, PR, communications, innovation, strategy and enterprise development. This is our second year to be involved.
This event allows the youth teams to interact with specialists, gaining support, wisdom and advice relating to their innovational ideas and projects.
What is Young Social Innovators?
“YSI is about encouraging young people to re-imagine the world and empowering them to bring their vision to life”. YSI aim is to give everyone a chance to explore and use their creative side to reply to social issues and have a say in building a fairer, more caring and equal society. YSI support and encourage the youth of today to realise what they can do to regarding social innovation, by giving them the skills required and helping to build their confidence to undertake any social issue they may face personally, within their community and even a wider society. By helping young people YSI are promoting ‘wellbeing amongst young people and communities and helps build a more inclusive, empathetic, fair society’.
At YSI they put the young people they work with in the ‘driving seat’, allowing them to view the world in a different light while getting them to picture the type of community they would like to be part of. YSI challenges them to bring their ideas to life, by putting their ideas into practice. YSI believe that by working as a team these ideas can become reality. As YSI states ‘ Sometimes failing. Sometimes starting again. But always learning. And learning by doing.’
YSI Elevate Increasing Impact!
YSI Elevate is a gas pedal drive for teams who have already shown considerable impact through their YSI projects, as well as helping support them if they wish for their projects and ideas to expand. YSI Elevate offer support through professional help and help to widen their network of support.
Teams are invited to partake in an survey to help identify what supports the young people would like to see available to help bring their ideas forward into reality. YSI then build a team of professionals based on the answers from the survey to help the youth with advice, support and even some mentoring.
Todays YSI Teams
Today there was four different teams seeking advice and support from specialists, theses where:
- GET THE MESSAGE – This group is from Ardscoil Mhuire, Corbally, Co Limerick. Get the message won the Gold Award in 2018 for their project on ‘sexting’ among their peers. The group had campaigned for a specific law relating to the issue. They worked alongside with representatives from the government, social media companies and their community guards.
2. OUR TEENAGE BRAIN – WE CAN’T TAKE ALL THE BLAME – From Galway, Youthreach this team won the Bronze Award 2018 on their project ‘understanding the teenage brain.’ They were driven to understand young adults feelings, thoughts and behaviours. Through working with different companies they were able to run ‘educational programmes for teens.’ They also created awareness posters, created an educational card game and produced an informational video.
3. D.A.S.H Diary – from Coláiste Treasa, Kanturk, Co. Cork project was based on fighting against anxiety. They worked with teachers, parents, mental health organisations and students, with seed funding from YSI Den. The final publication of this diary is due to be given out to 1st and 2nd year students.
4. NO LIMITS – From St. Joseph’s college, Lucan, Co Dublin, created three story books with more currently on the way. They are a small publishing company in Lucan who have through their books promote an important, positive message relating to disabilities and how people with disabilities should not be treated any differently to anyone else.
The Business Fairy Digital Marketing Agency is a proud specialist advisor for YSI since 2017. We love being able to help support, encourage and offer advice to the youth of today. Being a part of such a worthwhile organisation is truly a privilege.
