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Pictured are Mercy Secondary School, Mounthawk, Tralee, Co Kerry, who won the Make Our World Safer Award for their ‘Catch my Drift: Water Safety’ project at Young Social Innovators of the Year Awards in Croke Park this week. Picture by Shane O’Neill, Coalesce
MERCY Mounthawk students were among winners of Young Social Innovators of the Year Awards earlier this week.
The YSI awards, which took place in Croke Park on Tuesday, celebrate excellence in youth-led social innovation.
The winner of the YSI Make Our World Safer Challenge Award was a YSI team from Mercy Secondary School, Mounthawk, Tralee, Co. Kerry, for a project titled ‘Catch My Drift: Water Safety’, highlighting essential water safety and drowning prevention awareness in their school and local communities.
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They weren’t the only Kerry winner as the YSI Make Our World Healthier: Mental Health Challenge Award, in partnership with HSE Healthy Ireland, was won by a YSI team from Killorglin Community College, Killorglin, Co. Kerry for a project titled ‘Bridging the Generation’.
The goal of the project is to give secondary school students tools to help them handle negative emotions and build rapport with staff at school.
Other awards were presented, too, and a team from St. Brendan’s College, Killarney won a YSI Advocacy Award for their ‘SEM for Inclusion’ project, which aims to raise awareness of and reduce exclusion faced by people with a disability.
A team from Castleisland Community College, Castleisland, Co Kerry were highly commended in the YSI Digital Innovators Award, in partnership with Virgin Media.
For their project, titled ‘You Know What Gets on my Nerves? MS’, the team developed an app providing information and support for people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Now in their twenty-second year, this year’s national finals event was the first live, in-person Young Social Innovators of the Year Awards since 2019.
The awards ceremony was co-presented by broadcaster Zara King and former Hometown boyband member Dayl Cronin, in front of an audience of around 600 young people from secondary schools the length and breadth of the country.
Thirty-four teams of shortlisted Senior Cycle students competed live in a range of challenges in front of three expert judging panels.
For more information about Young Social Innovators, see www.youngsocialinnovators.ie
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