YSI

2015

5th year YSI Advocates campaigning for Health and Wellbeing at Mercy College - they introduced fruit pots as a part of Healthy eating into our school canteen and held a mindfulness week and workshop promoting positive mental health.
 

As part of our YSI Action Project - We hope to improve health and wellbeing and create a vibrant and colourful area where students at Mercy College can enjoy physical activity and fresh air at lunchtimes with their friends.
 
Here are some of the actions we carried out:
 
We designed our ideal recreational area
We surveyed students for their opinions on the outdoor area
We had two clean up days involving students, teachers and parents
We have 12 local companies sponsoring us - BEGreene Gardening, Woodies, Heiton Buckley Supplies, Chadwicks, Crown Paint, Artane Coolock Credit Union, Lidl, ESB Finglas Depot, PACE, Dublin City Council, Coolock Crochet Club, Coolock Gardening Club
We arranged for a sports Officer from Dublin City Council to do lunchtime activities on our basketball court
We promoted physical activity by holding a fun obstacle course for first years
We interviewed speakers from Sky sports Living - Living for sport to speak about a healthy lifestyle and sport.
 
We pitched for funding at the YSI DEN
 
We hope to have an open day in May to thank all the sponsors, teachers, parents and students for their support.

Our project is about 'Gender Inequality in Sport'
AS part of our YSI Action Project - We want to make people more aware of gender inequality in sport in our society and try to make a change. We interviewed successful female Irish and International sportswomen in our local area and investigated their experiences of gender inequality in a variety of sports - Rowing, Rugby, Basketball, Gaelic Football. We hope that these successful sportswomen will act as role models to encourage gender equality in sport. We started in our school. We hope these inspiring women will help us to inspire the female students at our school to believe in themselves and to trust their abilities, skills and talents.
 

 

2014

We are a group of transition year students. As part of our YSI Project 2014 we had a Homelessness Awareness Week at our school.
1) We gave presentations at assembly time to each year group
2) We read out Homelessness Messages on the intercom every morning for that week.
3) We had an Homelessness thoughts board.
4) We ran Homelessness competitions- best poem, best superhero, best poster, crossword, wordsearch.
5) We took part in the 5mile Simon Fun Run in Phoenix Park with 50 students from school and raised €1,000 for homelessness charities
6) We carried out a survey on homelessness at our school.
7) We organised a pancake day and a hot chocolate day to raise money for our charities.
8) Finally, we decided to design, create and develop a homelessness comic strip.

As part of our YSI Project 2014 we had an Internet Safety Awareness Week at our school.
1) We gave presentations at assembly time to each year group
2) We read out Internet Safety Messages on the intercom every morning for that week.
3) We had an Internet Safety thoughts board.
4) We ran Internet Safety competitions- best poem, best superhero, best poster, crossword, wordsearch and a lunchtime scavenger hunt.
5) We asked students to sign a petition against the website ASKFM.
6) We carried out a survey on internet safety at our school.
7) We carried out Random Acts of Kindness on Internet Safety day- provided free hot chocolate to students that did RAK.
8) Finally, we decided to create a 4 minute video on Internet Safety called 'Your safety is ON the LINE.

ESB Turlough Hill Power Station, Glendalough, Co Wicklow in Sept.
 
We're having a clean up day on Friday 10th 1.30-3.30 if it suits you and yours if your're available of course? ALL WELCOME
 
My YSI group are trying to renovate the outdoor basketball court into an outdoor recreation area. Its full of weeds and briars at the moment. Hedge clippers or chain saws would be handy too !!!! Any gardening equipment.

 

 

ysi on stage

Students had to submit a project 'Let’s Get Greener' in March on the efforts they made in their school and community on bringing about awareness on Recycling, Litter and the Environment. Below are examples on how they brought environmental awareness at Mercy College.

  • Recycling competitions
  • Litter surveys
  • Increased recycling facilities in the school
  • Set up the Mercy Challenge puzzle for students at lunchtimes
  • Wrote a report on Electrical recycling
  • Wrote the YSI Report on our 'Let’s Get Greener' Campaign
  • Encouraged students to recycle batteries
  • Sold WEEE recycling bags at lunchtimes
  • Invited guest speakers from environmental organisations to speak at Mercy College (Eco Unesco, Dublin Waste Management, Environmental Protection Agency, Repak and Green Schools Programme).

They were invited to attend a YSI Speak out at the Helix, DCU, Dublin in March against hundreds of other schools in Leinster. This was a chance for the girls to display their knowledge on the topic in a creative way on stage for 2 mins.The speakout gives young people a platform to talk about and communicate social issues in creative ways to an audience of peers and local people.
We were successful in making it through to the YSI Final Showcase 2011 at CityWest Hotel on Wednesday 11th May. Once again the girls were asked to perform in a creative way for 3mins with an extra 3mins of questions from the judges. The girls performed their sketch 'The Green Green Show' on stage in front of hundreds of students. In our category 'Making our World Greener' we were against stiff competition from schools in Galway, Limerick and Louth. However, despite the tough competition, the girls were impeccable on stage getting their message about the environment across to the audience. After some challenging questions from the judges, the girls were able to relax for the rest of the day.
That evening at 5pm, the students waited in anticipation as they called out our category ''Making our World Greener' and gave a little introduction on our project finally announcing 'Let’s Get Greener' from Mercy College Coolock the winners.
It was such a great feeling, full of excitement the girls ran to the stage to collect their well deserved trophy.
Well done transition years from 4.2 for making it through to the YSI Final Showcase 2011. The following students performed at the Final Showcase - Amy McGrath, Nadine Duffy, Hannah Freeman, Katie Kelly, Kelly Callan, Jade Deegan, Lauren MCabe, Sinead O' Beirne, Aoife Redmond.

MS Scully

 
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