With the excitement building around the Ireland’s Top Teens show coming up on the 30^th October and 6^th November at 6pm on TV3, we have had several enquiries from people who are interested in setting up Foróige groups and citizenship programmes in their local area.

Who to talk to

The best person to talk to is Bernie McHugh at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)or 090 6448947.  Bernie will put you in touch with the Foróige staff person for your area. Bernie will also show you how to get an existing youth group involved in the Foróige Youth Citizenship programme or in the Permanent TSB Foróige Youth Citizenship awards.

How it works

A Foróige Club is a local community youth groupand is entirely volunteer run. The Foróige club is open to young people aged 12 to 18 or whatever range within those limits that suits your community. The members elect a club committee and run a formal club meeting at the beginning of each club night. This gives them a chance to make decisions about the running of the club and the activities to get involved in. Lots of clubs use the Youth Citizenship Programme to do simple but great things for other people such as fundraising for charity, area clean ups, senior citizens or children’s events and many others. Foróige also runs several Youth Cafés. You can read about the full range of activities on www.foroige.ie.

How to start

You need a place to meet – usually a local community centre.  You need at least 8 young people over the age of 12 and under 18, but you can have up to 30 or more. You also need at least one adult volunteer leader for every 8 young people in the club. You can safely operate a club of thirty with about 5 adults, allowing for at least 4 of them to be there each week. Adult volunteers must be over 18 and at least one person must be over 21 for insurance reasons. 

The next step

Once you have identified a meeting place and young people who express an interesting in joining, you should contact a Foróige staff person or volunteer and we will help you to progress the group. It is ideal if you also have potential volunteer leaders too.  This will involve you asking friends, neighbours or local parents if they would consider getting involved.

We can help

A Foróige staff person/volunteer will meet you and help you to identify any more volunteers that may be needed. We will take those volunteers through recruitment procedures to include Child Protection and training in the skills and knowledge they need to get started. This takes about four two hour sessions. We will introduce you to other clubs and leaders so you can feel part of a wider network. We will enable you to plan the start up of the club including how to advertise for young people to get involved, how to tell parents about the club and a plan for the first few weeks to help you to get off to a great start.

Child Protection

Foróige aims to operate at the highest standards in child protection. This means we make our clubs as safe as we can for young people and gives adult volunteers reassurance that they will be supported to work safely with young people.  We will train you to follow excellent ways of working with young people and how to respond if a young person discloses they are being abused by someone.

Recruitment of volunteers

People get involved in community organisations mostly because someone asked them – so don’t be afraid to ask other suitable people to get involved.  All adult  volunteers go through a recruitment process which includes filling in an application form, nominating two referees which Foróige will speak to, an informal interview, Garda vetting through Foróige (even if you were previously vetted elsewhere) and signing a declaration that you will follow Foróige policy and procedures in your work with young people.