RACE Team Wins the Garda Youth Award

The remarkable 'RACE - Right Attitude Creates Equality' YSI Teams win Monaghan Youth Garda Award. 🏆 💛

In an inspiring display of passion, commitment, and advocacy, the remarkable YSI Team RACE - Right Attitude Creates Equality from Largy College in Clones, co. Monaghan has been selected as winners of the Monaghan Youth Garda Award. This esteemed recognition celebrates their exceptional efforts in championing equality and creating a more inclusive society, where diversity is appreciated and celebrated. With their unstoppable dedication and remarkable achievements, the RACE Team has become a shining example for young people across Ireland, demonstrating the profound impact that can be achieved through collaboration and a shared vision.

The Youth Garda Award honors and applauds the positive contributions made by young people in their communities. It serves as a beacon of recognition for those who embody the values of compassion, leadership, and social responsibility. For the RACE Team, winning the Youth Garda Award is a testament to their tireless dedication to creating a society where equality thrives. 

We've asked the RACE Team to tell us their story and share a few tips with other young social innovators who are on their social innovation journey. See what they told us! 👇 👇 👇

💬 How has your project developed since you first started YSI? 💬

Our project has gone from strength to strength since we first started and we never expected it to get to where it is today! We started out doing YSI as a module in transition year that’s always popular in our school. We made it to the finals in 2020 and won the Make our world fair and just challenge award. In 2021 we were offered to participate in YSI Elevate. 

Participating in Elevate really allowed our project to flourish. There were a lot of loose ends when we finished TY and didn’t feel ready to let them go so we decided to keep working on our project in fifth year. Our aims for Elevate were to publish our cookbook “A taste of humanity”, hold an event to celebrate it’s launch, further develop our podcast “Let’s talk about it” and host a multi cultural day in our local primary school to celebrate diversity. With help from the panelists we met at the first round of Elevate we were able to secure a publishing deal with CJ Fallon and met our mentor (who we now call our momager) Angela Horgan who has been one of our biggest cheerleaders. 

We also pitched to the dragons at the YSI den and received €500 in funding which we used to host our multi cultural day in St. Tiarnach’s primary school that was a huge success. Our multi cultural day initiative caught the eye of Monaghan County council and they asked us to meet the Monaghan Joint policing committee with the possibility of them adopting our project to turn it into an educational programme. The JPC unanimously voted to adopt our project which lead us to receive €57,000 in funding from the Department of Justice. 

Over the last 2 years we have managed to publish our cookbook, host a launch party, create a podcast series, work with Monaghan County Council and Joint policing committee, appear on national TV, radio and newspapers as well as win a Garda youth award - to say we’ve come a long way and been on an incredible journey would be an understatement! 

We believe that our school and wider community are now more aware of the issue and have a stronger focus to work towards resolving it, and once we know that our project is having an impact and starting conversations then we know that we’re doing the right thing - and that is definitely something to be proud of. 

💬 What are you proudest of regarding your work as social innovators? 💬

We are incredibly proud of all of our accomplishments, particularly being able to achieve them as busy 5th and 6th year students but most important of all we are proud of the difference that we have and are making in society. 

One of our podcast episodes featured a student from a school in Monaghan where she spoke about how she experienced racist discrimination in school and in the community - we believe this was the catalyst for raising awareness that racism is a problem right in front of us. Through our podcasts, multi cultural days and book we are using modern, effective and inclusive methods to raise awareness and highlight the fact that every culture, race and religion should be celebrated and embraced. 

We believe that our school and wider community are now more aware of the issue and have a stronger focus to work towards resolving it, and once we know that our project is having an impact and starting conversations then we know that we’re doing the right thing - and that is definitely something to be proud of. 

💬 What advice would you give to other young people beginning their social innovation journey? 💬

Predominantly, you’re never going to get everything right or perfect, and that’s okay! One of the biggest lessons we learned is the fact that it’s all a matter of trial and error and being able to take the highs with the lows is important. We also realised that we are still only teenage students, and achieving everything we have at our age is something admirable in itself. Looking back, some of the mishaps that happened along the way made the best (and at times funniest) memories. 

Something that really helped us get so far was having contacts and connections  - there will always be someone willing to help you! From funding, to venues, to CEO’s and dance coaches we really have made plenty of phone calls and emails but have always managed to find someone who was able to help us. Don’t be afraid to reach out to people because it’s highly likely that they will be as invested as you are. As well as that, know what you’re looking for and that it’s okay to decline offers too. We received offers that weren’t suitable to our aims so we didn’t take them - and that’s completely fine because something better will always follow. The power of having contacts is the more people that you get to back your project, the bigger the impact will be.

Finally, be creative and innovative in everything you do. A book full of recipes or painting and dancing with primary school children may not seem like the most obvious way to tackle racism but it has been highly effective! The more fun the more memorable and impactful it will be. Yes, it’s a serious issue you’re trying to tackle, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun in the process. Be creative and know that no idea is ever too drastic. We learned that from our YSI guide Sascha Cumiskey - she always encouraged every single idea we had no matter how unattainable it seemed. 

Be creative and innovative in everything you do. Yes, it’s a serious issue you’re trying to tackle, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun in the process. Be creative and know that no idea is ever too drastic.

💬 What are your future plans for the RACE project? 💬

Now that we have graduated and will be heading off to college our involvement in the project will start to drop (as much as we wish we could do it forever) but we have passed the baton over to the Joint policing committee and future YSI teams in our school to develop a toolkit that will allow other TY students and YSI groups to organise and carry out multicultural days just like we did on a county and hopefully national level in the future.

We have sold nearly 300 copies of our book and will be donating all profits to two charities that are close to our hearts in the coming months. 

Even though we are stepping back from our project, we hope that the impact and message it carries will continue - there is no such thing as race. There is just the human race.