SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS:The six finalists for Irish Social Entrepreneur of the Year are described as "unreasonable people" – but it's that very ability that's to be celebrated
CARMEL DUNNE
CEOL:"Music completes the child, says Carmel Dunne, the Ballyfermot woman who founded Ceol. In 1998, Dunne brought together local school principals and invited Ballyfermot residents, and musicians the Keenans and the Fureys, to give a demonstration. Her initiative paid off and in 1999 Dunne secured funding to roll out a musical programme to 10 local schools. "I realised that kids in the area weren't getting the same musical education I had growing up Ballyfermot in the 1950s and 1960s," she says.
By 2005, a pilot scheme at Ballyfermot's Kylemore College, funded by the local VEC and facilitated by Ceol, was extended to give additional after-school music tuition to children who had already experienced Ceol.
In 2006, Social Entrepreneurs Ireland invited Ceol to take the programme nationwide and the organisation developed a music curriculum. Teachers once fearful of the subject were now embracing it. Children listened to music from around the world and got to try everything from percussion instruments to violins.
"We're now working with teachers in 250 schools in 23 counties," Dunne says. "We get kids saying, 'I come to school for music'," she says. The observation is no surprise as research has linked early music education to everything from better attendance rates to competencies in languages, maths and science.
"Ceol is more successful that I could ever have imagined," Dunne says. "A mind that is opened and stimulated by music can be a conduit to all sorts of learning."
PAUL MOONEY
TRASNA:The recent restoration of a drab Labour Exchange on Gardiner Street to its former glory as Trinity Church was transformative in more ways than one. Many of those working were participants in Trasna, a programme helping former prisoners to re-establish themselves in society. "Some of those coming out of prison haven't used the euro before," says Paul Mooney, who founded Trasna in 2007. "For them, time has stood still, but they're coming out into a different world."
Mooney founded Jobcare, an agency that up-skills the long-term unemployed, in 1994. During the boom years, he saw that ex-offenders were being left behind and he extended Jobcare's services to support them. Mooney spread the word about Trasna through the probation services, social-welfare offices and by word of mouth. "We guarantee 20 hours work a week and one day on-the-job work experience, or a study programme for a year." During the restoration of Trinity Church, "Participants worked alongside skilled tradesmen, seeing and learning different trades and experiencing the world of work.
"Only three people out of 30 who have left the programme over the past three years have re-offended, compared to the national average of 45 per cent who re-offend after three years. Practical kindness can do so much for someone who is downtrodden. More than ever we need to take risks, to try something new that might make a difference."
JOHN LAWLOR
BRIDGE TO COLLEGE:"I have a burning feeling that education in this country could be a whole lot better," says John Lawlor, manager of the Bridge to College (B2C) programme.
There is a poor uptake of third-level education by young people in certain disadvantaged areas. This Dublin-based programme is tackling a challenge that free fees alone has failed to solve. Lawlor's approach is to change the often poor perceptions that young people from under-resourced communities have towards education.
"Their personal learning lags behind their personal talent," Lawlor says. "In classrooms, learning is teacher-directed. Students aren't encouraged to take personal responsibility for their learning. They practice highly individualised rote learning aimed at passing an exam – it's off-putting for many students, and even those who do make it to college have no idea how to collaborate."
Describing the approach of B2C, Lawlor says: "Young people are encouraged to learn by doing. They make videos, use digital media, animation, music and drama. It ignites their desire for learning. We trust young people to teach each other and to learn from each other."
Working with its umbrella body, Suas, and Trinity College, B2C has now reached 1,500 pupils in 25 schools around Dublin. The programme is also providing the basis for a new initiative, Bridge 21, which aims to change teaching practice in all schools.
"Individualised learning doesn't make sense for the Irish," says Lawlor. "Our talent is for narrative, for stories and for working together. Our challenge is to reinvent the relationship between the pupil and the teacher."
MICHAEL KELLY
GIY:Sick of the grind of the capital and his job in software sales, Michael Kelly and his wife Mary swapped Dublin for Dunmore East, where he intended to pursue a career in writing.
It was a stroll down a supermarket aisle in Waterford city that proved to be this entrepreneur's road to Damascus. "I threw a bulb of garlic in the trolley and noticed the label said it had been grown in China," Kelly says. "It was so cheap and so small, and it could have been grown just as easily here. It was then I realised our food chain was all about imports." Kelly stuck the cloves of garlic in his garden. When a plant grew, he says he was "bitten by the bug" and he began growing his own food.
In 2008, he put an ad in a local paper with the aim of forming a growers' group: "I put out 15 chairs in a hall in Waterford and 100 people showed up." Now Kelly works full time for Grow it Yourself Ireland, a charity that aims to inspire people to grow their own food and give them the skills they need to do it. It has 70 groups and 6,000 members in Ireland as well as branches in the UK and Australia. "Some growers are worried about food miles, some just want cheaper food, while others just like good grub and good company."
So what does the future hold? "Success will be when growing it yourself is the norm, that's our vision."
FRANCES BLACK
RISE:"I didn't know what a social entrepreneur was until that's what someone called me," says the singer and counsellor Frances Black. As the founder of Rise, an organisation that helps the families of addicts to understand addiction and mend the relationships that may have been damaged by it, it's a title that fits.
The performer set up the foundation in 2008 following a huge response from traumatised relatives after she spoke publicly of her own experience of alcoholism. "I was inundated with calls from families, all desperate for help on how to deal with an addict. People would come up to me at signings and tell me their stories. I was very moved by it."
Following her own recovery, Black had trained as an addiction counsellor at the Rutland Centre. She says it was here that she saw first hand the impact that addiction had on families. "Every day, they watch someone they love slowly killing themselves. No matter how many times you may have asked them to stop, they just can't hear you. Families are grieving for the person they are losing to addiction."
Rise, which stands for Recovery in a Safe Environment, runs a 10-week programme as well as a one-week residential programme on Rathlin Island, where the family members of addicts are given a space for themselves. "It may be just one member of the addict's family, or a daughter may come with her mother for support," says Black. "Addiction still carries a stigma, so for many, it will be the first time they've spoken out. They feel a phenomenal sense of freedom."
DARA HOGAN
FLEDGLINGS:"I'd always worked to make money for other people," says Dara Hogan. But three years ago the accountant decided to take another path. Hogan joined An Cosán, a Tallaght West education and training centre in 2007, tasked with setting up a childcare enterprise scheme.
Hogan's mantra is simple: "Education is the solution to poverty and disadvantage." A not-for-profit social franchise, Fledglings helps early years educators who were Fetac-qualified at An Cosán to set up their own affordable pre-school services. "It's not good enough to just get them qualified, we wanted to help them get jobs and use their skills for the good of the community, too."
The project now has four sites at Fettercairn, Brookfield, Kiltipper and at the Institute of Technology, Tallaght, offering 150 child places and up to 38 jobs. For Hogan, who spent 40 years working in finance and general management in the private sector, the joy is more than just a logistical success of joining the dots to solve a social problem. "Children who receive early years education do far better in education and personal development in later life," he says. "The children have a say in structuring their own lessons. They're asked to plan what they'd like to do and educators facilitate it."
There are plans to open six other Fledglings sites by 2012.
