Local volunteers attend annual Foróige conference
FORÓIGE volunteers from all over Ireland came together in the Hodson Bay Hotel in Roscommon last weekend for Ireland’s leading youth organisation’s annual volunteer conference.
Current Foróige Chairperson David O’Reilly was among the Wicklow representatives, along with Irene Lacy and Geraldine Brennan.
This was the 49th annual Foróige Volunteers Conference, with 250 delegates from 22 counties enjoying a wide variety of guest speakers, workshops, and social events aimed at exchanging ideas to continue Foróige volunteers phenomenal work throughout the country.
The theme of the conference this year was ‘Foróige Volunteers – preparing young people for a changing world’ and it also explored the future direction of youth work and best practice within the sector. Psychologist and Author Shane Martin gave the conference keynote address on the theme of happiness.
Mr O’Reilly, the Foróige
Chairperson and volunteer with Chillax Youth Café in Carnew, said: ‘
Volunteerism has a very special place in Irish culture. As a Nation, we are good at volunteering, it’s in our DNA and part of what makes us who are. For fifty years, the Irish Government has entrusted youth work to volunteer-led organisations and we have not let them down. This is as it should be, it is how youth work operates at its best, not simply a cheap way of keeping young people off the streets, but a unique and distinctly Irish way of enabling young people to develop to be their best selves.’
Foróige has over 6,500 volunteers working in its 650 clubs, 160 projects and programmes, and engage with over 50,000 young people year after year