A GROUP of enterprising young secondary school students in New Ross are working hard at addressing the problems caused to thousands of people around the country by ineffective Government.
The Transition Year students in Our Lady of Lourdes Secondary School created ‘Home Angels’ as part of their Young Social Innovators Programme for 2013.
Commenting on the initiative to The Echo, the students highlighted the importance of their project within the wider community: “Our project’s main aim was to help the elderly or others in need with home care. Our plan for the future is that we can reverse the cuts in home care and spread out across the country. We would also like people to take on the idea of our project and allow Home angels to thrive in their local area.”
The students decided some of the services of Home Angels could included going into the homes of elderly people and helping them with everyday tasks like cooking, cleaning, washing up, taking care of pets, talking to them, shopping, and mowing the lawn.
“We selected this social issue due to the huge cuts in home care which was a big problem to those who were in need of it,” said the students.
“Our class felt it was our responsibility to help the ones in need with home care and try to make a difference in our local communities.”
The students worked with a number of different people on the project and got advice from leading professionals including doctors, Home Care teams, the general public, newspapers, retirement associations and nursing homes.
The group compiled leaflets outlining their intentions and what they were about.
“Once we had all the information about us, along with our contact information on the leaflet, we went down into town to give them to shops and people in the streets,” said the students.
“We also made accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Tumbler to advertise our project and tell people was it’s about.”
The students also created a petition to enable the general public to voice their support for the overall campaign.
“While doing this we were also able to write letters to our local newspapers letting them know all about our projects so they could help us spread the word of Home Angels.”
At Christmas time the students visited elderly people and sand seasonal favourites to them to “bring them the Christmas spirit”.
“We all found it to be very enjoyable and heart warming as well,” they said.
“The elderly people did seem to enjoy it and we were all delighted to know this.”
Such is the impact of the student’s campaign to-date that they were invited onto the Late Late Show to talk about the project and they also spoke on Newstalk.
The girls have won their way through to the national final of the YSI competition for 2013 – which will be held in Citywest, Dublin, on May 8.
Regardless of how they do in the final they can feel justifiably proud of themselves for what they have achieved so far in bring back badly needed services to elderly people in the community.
