As our week winds down we’ve continued to meet with different youth workers and youth allies, today was no different. We began our morning at the Girl’s Model School, a secondary school that provides a range of activities before, during, and after school to support teaching and learning. This is a unique school in Belfast that employs social workers, counselors, and behavioral, attendance, and family officers who all work together in supporting the students. All staff work together to provide academics and vocational training which includes cosmetology, manufacturing, music production, dance and much more. Another unique aspect of this school is their emphasis on family involvement to promote life long learning as well as a goal in giving back to the community. As Janice, the Community Involvement Coordinator stated, “The purpose of this school is to help a family educate a child”. The value of family and community this place holds left us wondering how we can implement the same into our own schools.
For lunch we stopped in the famous St. George’s Market located in Central Belfast. The Market offered many different global cuisines as well as jewelry, antiques, books, and textiles.
We continued on to visit Vernon Ringland a local organization called Youth Bank. We learned about their work in the decision making youth-led process around allocating funding to different programs and projects working to impact change. They are also international and their model of youth work is used in many different countries outside of Ireland. Vernon walked us through many different experientially based activities so we, as youth workers could learn exactly how they use this model with youth around the world. The activities were interesting in how we were able to really experience and reflect on what we were learning around the system and policies around funding.
Through the process of listing different things we enjoyed during our time at Youth Bank we were able to narrow the list down to three themes that helped explain our experience; comfort, participation, and interaction.
As the weekend approaches, our excitement heightens in anticipation to leave on our journeys to different places. Some of us will be traveling to Scotland, Amsterdam, and Dublin while a few will stay in Belfast to have some down time and explore the city further. One of our group members will also be riding a 100 mile bike ride to support
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