Active Citizenship starts early. I think that there is a huge gap in this country in particular when it comes to involving children in any meaningful way in decision-making on issues that affect their lives. I believe it is vital to put resources into including children from the earliest age in decision-making about the services and issues that affect them. For example, in schools: although children’s right to have a say on services that affect them and for their opinion to be taken into account is enshrined in (at least international)law, I see no evidence of this in action in my own child’s primary school. There is a student council in the school for children over a certain age only (why???), but I cannot see any evidence at all that this works as a vehicle for children to have some say in shaping their learning environment, and dealing with any grievances they may have. The issues that they all say really bother them (being shouted at, nhaving to go along with punish
ments and sanctions for rules that they do not understand, having to sit still all day with only a very short break, not having enough time to eat their lunch - 10 minutes! - playground issues, etc.) are NEVER brought up in this forum. This is very sad. This illustrates to me how each individual needs to be trained and supported to become an active citizen, and children are no exception. I would like to see government resources put into getting children involved in decision-making about how their schools are run, drawing up behaviour policies and procedures, peer mediation, all as part of a whole-school approach - this only seems to happen now by pure chance when there is an enlightened head. This could be the most powerful way to ensure that you don’t have powerless and apathetic adults coming out of our school system - no surprise that so many people are not involved as active citizens at a local or national level - many don’t even vote.

It is encouraging to see the Toiseach’ support for active citizens in this
country. Unfortunately,as an active citizen working to promote increased
government investment in childcare and childcare, my experience has been
that active citizens are not always welcomed by some Government Ministers,
civil servants or by those working in Government agencies on the ground.
In fact some times active citizens are seen more as a nuisance and a
threat to Government rather than a resource that could be used positively
to inform Government policy for the benefit of particular causes or society
in general. Active citizens who are funded by Government sources can also
be threatened with the withdrawal of funding for their work or project if
they raise their voice to express misgivings, highlight issues or put
forward recommendations with which individual Ministers or Civil Servants
are not in agreement.

DeniseMcCormilla
Border Counties Childcare Network
Unit10d M-Tek Building
Knockaconny
Co. Monaghan
Tel: 047 72469
Fax: 047 72491
Mobile: 086 0662969

dear Wheel,
i am working as Cross Border development Worker in Drogheda Community forum, we are running a one day seminar highlighting Active Citizenship. this day will be for our community and voluntary groups to attend and will include shorts talks on the importance of participation, some groups work to engage participannts and evaluation.
we would appreciate a speaker from your organisation to address the seminar with knowledge of what is happening in this area currently. please contact me for further details.
Paulette

Paulette Mc Ardle
Drogheda Community Forum
Fitzwilliam Business Centre
Singleton House
Laurence Street
Drogheda
Ph 041 9806900
Fax 041 9806999

Active Citizenship is pointing out areas of our Democracy that are not working well and giving suggestions as to how to put it right. This is how many Voluntary Organisations start out. They spot a problem and they get volunteers together to try to solve the problem.
What the Government needs to do it Actively listen to Volunteer groups and individuals, start up a discussion and then act on the advice either by supporting the Voluntary Organisation or taking it on board and paying its members fully, so that the Service is offered to all citizens.
Sadly what we often see is that the Government starts to fund voluntary organisations and then drops them like the Childline and Womens Aid. We need more committment from the Government.
The area I am trying to point out is Childcare. The Government have responded to working mothers by offereing them some help with childcare expenses but has ignored Mothers in general many of whom do not have the luxury of "working" outside the home for money. I believe that all mothers and carers should be paid for the care they provide to our children and that all ex mothers and grandmothers who languish now in homes without pensions should receive "back pay" for all the years they worked "voluntarily" as unpaid mothers and carers. Nowadays a household needs two incomes to support a house and household so it makes sense to upgrade the voluntary work a mother does, and let her pay taxes, pay her insurance and contribute to her pension scheme. We talk a lot about the rights of children to housing, food etc but the most basic right a child should have is to 24 hour CARE all the way from babyhood to adulthood. A salary to cover that care could
be paid to the mother, the father, a nanny, a creche, a family member, a homehelp or any combination of the above.
If a mother had a salary to provide care for her children, no employer would have to pay maternity or paternity leave as the salary could cover it, small to medium business have found theses costs prohibitive and I think they are unnessary. If a mother choses to work outside the home, she could use the salary to pay a grandmother, or nanny to care fulltime for her children. But most importantly stay at home mothers would for the first time in decades get due recognition for the work they do.
Town:Dublin

Hello,
You’ve a great idea here in this site. Good luck with it.
The area of work that I am involved with is the media. Mainstream media is more and more becoming the sole means of interaction and communication for the majority of our citizens.
Yet, this communication is very one sided. We can all be media consumers, but it is substantially difficult for citizens to access mainstream media. Since citizenship, in my understanding, is about realising our rights and responsiblities as members of the state, it would follow that media representations, media debate and media access be fair, balanced, and do justice to the complexites that are inherent in all societal issues.
I would like to see an appreciation of the importance of empowering citizens with the skills of media literacy, to both enable an understanding of how media works (or does not work) and to diminish the barrier to access that exists to important debates.
Thanks for affording me the opportunity to share my thoughts.
Kind Regards,
David.

Hi there!
My name is Chiara and I work as the Placement Officer for Social Inclusion in Volunteering Ireland.
Volunteering Ireland promotes high quality voluntary activity, by encouraging organisations, who involve volunteers, to adopt good policy and practice, and by acting as a link between such organisations and individuals who wish to undertake meaningful voluntary work.
We are currently developing a project about Social Inclusion. Its focus is in changing perceptions about who is able to volunteer and to show that people who are traditionally perceived as ‘the helped’ can actually be ‘HELPERS’ themselves.
We believe that volunteering must be made accessible to all and we aim to smash stereotypes about who can volunteer.
We believe that volunteering is a way to participate to the community, to be and to feel useful, to contribute and it can play a major role in am Active Citizenship strategy: not only does everyone have the right to volunteer; everyone has something to contribute as a volunteer and as a citizen!
We therefore aim to promote inclusive volunteering through, among all, an inclusive placement service, which will enable people in the Dublin City Council area to volunteer freely and easily, regardless of background or ability:
- Promoting the benefits of inclusive volunteering to organisations and individuals;
- Supporting potential volunteers with additional support needs and assisting them appropriately in preparing for involvement in volunteering;
- Supporting and facilitating the placement of volunteers with additional support needs into meaningful volunteering positions.

Please feel free to contact me if you need further information on the project or you would like to participate.
Suggestions are welcome, of course!
I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Chiara
Town:dublin
Phone:01 8722622

Attached please find my experience of struggling to be an ‘active citizen’ in Ireland to day.
I would really appreciate some feedback, ideally before end of next week as after that I will be away for a month.
Regards,
Claire Oakes
Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

Active Citizenship Consultation.doc

I am the Volunteer Coordinator with The Simon Communities of Ireland. My
responsibilities are to our Full Time Volunteers. These are volunteers
who committee to a six month placement in our communities working
alongside adults experiencing homelessness. We provide our Full Time
Volunteers with Accommodation Food Training Supervision and an expenses
allowance.

What are the barriers and what would I like to see the new task force
deal with?

First Status for Full-Time Volunteers

There is no legislation that recognizes the status of volunteers in
Ireland. This is of great importance when we speak of Full Time
Volunteers. If you are volunteering Full Time you are obviously not
employed but neither are you unemployed. So what category do you fall
into? If you are an Irish citizen and you volunteer Full Time you risk
losing any social welfare benefits such as rent allowance and you
apparently cannot sign for credits during your time volunteering. I say
apparently as I have been given contradictory advice from the Department
of Social and Family Affairs regarding this.

Second Volunteer Visa

If a foreign person applies to volunteer Full Time (the vast majority of
our Full Time Volunteers are from counties other than Ireland) there is
no volunteer visa / permit that they can apply for, as they do not
exist. All international Full Time Volunteers must get a visitors visa
and when they are in the country they register with the local guards,
this person has no particular status while they are here, they simply
have an extended stay stamped on their passport.

Third Regulation

If there was legislation, we would all operate within a regulated area.
Now volunteers are vulnerable and the work they do is not valued enough
for it too deem legal recognition and regulation.

The energy and commitment that we derive from all our volunteers has a
significant and meaningful impact on our communities and on the wider
society. The mutual learning that results from volunteering is not
harnessed and we do not encourage our youth to get involved in voluntary
activities.

Full Time Volunteering is an alternative way to learn and develop many
skills. If each citizen had a once off opportunity to volunteer Full
Time for a six-month period our society would benefit greatly and
volunteering would not be such an alien
concept but become part of what we do as a nation for all our benefits.

I would welcome any developments in these areas and I am very pleased
that this is now on the national agenda.

Thank you for your time,

Sincerely,
Noeleen O’Callaghan
Volunteer Co Ordinator
The Simon Communties of Ireland.
Phone 01 6711606
Fax 01 6711098
email noeleen.ocallaghan@simoncommunity.com

I have a question. What does it mean to be Irish? Does the state recognise(truly recognise) black people as citizens because I think there seems to be some uncertainty. If we can answer this question, it becomes easier for me to give my view of what an active citizen is.

The work carried out by myself on behalf of the BCCN, will lead to more active particpation from children in settings, leading to more active citizens later in life.
We begin with the youngest children trying to help practitoners see children as separate individuals with rights and responsibilities. We use listening and learning as a reflective tool for working with children in a variety of settings.
We want to help children to feel confident about who they are, how they feel about themselves and how they relate to others.
Listening and learning from children within settings and taking a pro-active approach in seeing that this becomes part of the everyday fabric of practice is a must.
An active citizen is someone who exercise rights as well as resonsiblities and is involved in community/local life in general e.g - vote and use it wisely, neighbour watch schemes, youth work, involvement in local/community politics. Children can also be involved in different peer forums on in clubs or within their our schools or settings. It is a democratic way of being that should be promoted.
Many people are on the margins and outskirts of society and need to be brought in the from the cold more sucessfully.
We must begin with the youngest children giving them a sense of autonomy and choices in relation to everyday life so that they can then grow up to make good choices and better decisions in their lives. When children feel they have choice, they feel more in control of what is happening to them and this affects everything form their self-esteem to their learning.
As adults we control our emotions by controlling our environment which children cannot do usually until they are much older.
We want to lay the foundations in our early years settings for positive active particpation of children to build on for future work. For parents this can mean simply a choice of what clothing to wear or for a teacher if maths, english and science has to be carried out, the children can choose which one they do first. This is a simple way of carrying this out in everyday life and makes it all less stressful when a position such as this is adopted. A platform of integrity is created enabling the children to feel better within themselves and makes for beeter relationships with the adults.
Democracy is a concept that needs to be worked on in society, at least an advanced idea of what democracy is and stands for.
Through the work we do at the BCCN, we faciliate settings to develop, enhance and extend their relationships with the children helping to create and devlop a community of enquiry and an ethos and ethic of listening in many ways.
Parents are involved and can see first hand how the child is developing in this way. In doing this a wider advocacy is being created so that wider society can share and develop in the experience and can begin to challenge how society views its younger citizens.
Many parents have said they would like to take more time for working in their communities, but long working hours and policies do not make this family friendly. Many people face a long trek to commute to work in the mornings and evening, which leaves little time for voluneter work. It also doesn’t pay for mothers to work part time in ireland so they load cannot be lessened in this way.
We need to see more discussions of societies policies for children and youth and they must take a more central position in this discussion and action.
It becomes important to make local areas or forums for discussion and reflection where people can engage with others. Schools and settings should become a locus of citizenship, which will then become in turn a matter for politicians, experts, administrators and the broader society.
Town:Monaghan