Last week I had the opportunity to visit Fighting Words, the creative writing centre set up in Dublin by Seán Love, former director of Amnesty Ireland, and writer Roddy Doyle. Seán was a winner of our 2011 Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Awards, and over the course of two years will receive support to the value of €200,000 to increase the impact of Fighting Words.

The motivation behind the centre is to bring creativity into the school system, something that Seán and Roddy felt was sorely lacking in the current Irish education system. They were inspired by 826 Valencia in the United States, which was set up by Dave Eggars with a similar aim. (I’d recommend this great TED talk by Dave Eggars which gives an overview of the idea: http://bit.ly/FPAEaf)

Sitting down the back of the room, I chuckled away to myself as the children from 4th class built a story from scratch. Encouraged to find a main character and a sidekick, I was constantly amazed at the creativity of the children when they were coming up with ideas. There was no mention of Jedward or Spongebob here, instead we were introduced to characters like “Jimmy the Baby Genius” or “A magician monkey”. In the end, the democratic vote left us with “Bill the Shufflin Puffin” and “Mr Buns the Flying Rabbit” (who flies with his ears, of course).  Encouraged to give Bill a ‘greatest wish’, the children decided that he wanted more than anything else to become a secret agent.

And then they started to develop the story…here was the intro…

“Bill the shuffling puffin was shuffling across the Antarctic when Mr Buns had a crash landing and they became friends.
Mr Buns said, “I’m Mr Buns, from a secret agent recruitment agency.”.  They saw an Inuit man who was trying to shoot Bill for his dinner. Mr Buns threw a snowball at the Inuit man and they escaped while he was stunned.”

Having crafted the intro together, the children then had the opportunity to develop the rest of the story individually. Unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to hear the endings, but I’m sure Bill and Mr Buns had a wide range of brilliant adventures that day, as the creativity in the room was turned up to the max.

Already, in just over two years, using over 400 volunteers, Fighting Words has hosted more than 32,000 students of all ages. There is so much demand for the services that the centre is booked out a year in advance. So where to from here? At the moment Social Entrepreneurs Ireland are working closely with Seán to develop a scaling strategy to increase the number of children that have access to this incredible opportunity.

Like the kids’ story in Fighting Words workshop last week, the first part of this story is complete. The centre has been a huge success and the demand for what they provide is huge. We are proud to be able to work with Seán as he starts to craft the next chapter.

It's hard to explain the magic of Fighting Words, so check out this great video too

In Social Entrepreneurs Ireland we find some of the best early stage social entrepreneurs in the country. We provide funding and we work with them to develop their organisation and leadership skills. We celebrate their achievements and we encourage others to join us in supporting them and other social entrepreneurs throughout Ireland.

So why do we do this?  It is not because we see social entrepreneurship as an end in itself. We do this because in social entrepreneurs we see one of the most powerful, effective and dynamic forces for change in Ireland. We do this because time and again we see them develop new and innovative solutions to some of the entrenched societal issues we face. We do this because, like them, we are driven by impact.

At the end of the day, that is what counts. Social Entrepreneurs Ireland and the social entrepreneurs we support must be judged by the impact we have on communities and the environment. Good intentions, although essential, are not enough. Our ability to make a significant difference to some of the societal issues we face is the bar by which we should be measured.

Over the last 12 months Social Entrepreneurs Ireland has been working hard to accelerate and grow the impact of the social entrepreneurs we support. We have seen our three impact leaders from 2010, Dara Hogan, Frances Black and John Lawlor, expand the breadth and depth of their work with the support of SEI. We have also seen our Alumni Network of 150 social entrepreneurs continue to drive change long after our funding has finished.  Irish people make great social entrepreneurs and this year we have seen our strongest ever pool of applicants for the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland awards. The eight awardees we are supporting, the 42 social entrepreneurs who attended our first ever Social Entrepreneurs Bootcamp in the Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship and the  208 people who applied this year are all exceptional people. It is our privilege to work with them.

Social entrepreneurs choose to believe in a brighter future, create innovative solutions to entrenched social problems and act to make them happen. Now is the time for us to stand shoulder to shoulder with them on their journey.

Seán Coughlan
Chief Executive

As part of the 2011 Finalists Programme, we’ll be giving all of the Finalists the chance to share information about their projects in their own words. The eight Finalists are taking part in a three month evaluation and support programme, through which they will each receive funding and support to the value of €25,000. This provides us with the opportunity to further assess the eight projects prior to the final selection of the three 2011 winners in October.  Come October, the three Award winners will receive an award to the value of €170,000 over a two-three year period, which will enable them to increase the impact of the work that they are doing in Ireland. Today, we have a double-blog from Sheila Gallagher and Melissa Griffith, a pair of social entrepreneurs who have founded Green Sod Land Trust.

Green Sod Land Trust

The idea of forming a land trust came out of our involvement in environmental campaigns over the years with Galway Environmental Alliance, into which we put a lot of energy, ideas, money and action.  Our reflection on what we were doing led us to think about how we could direct our energies in a more positive, pro-active way as opposed to being re-active and having to ‘fight’ to protect the natural world, which matters a great deal to us.

We know a paradigm shift in thinking is needed. If as a species we are to survive, we must, of necessity, move away from the old paradigm in which the Human is centre stage, to a new paradigm which puts Earth centre stage recognising the fact that we humans are only a part.  Out of a question we put to ourselves “what would you do if you couldn’t fail?” emerged the idea of setting up a Land Trust and working to save as many ecosystems and natural habitats as possible in Ireland, for future generations.  All species: spiders, beetles, earthworms, grasses, microbes and so on, have a right to live and flourish regardless of any need they may serve us.   And so in 2006, we set about establishing Green Sod Land Trust with a vision of an Ireland where ecosystems are thriving and flourishing.

What followed was a flurry of research on what was happening in Ireland and other countries regarding land conservation.  We discovered that Ireland was lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of protecting its ecosystems and biodiversity.  We began to see what the great scientists and philosophers of our time such as James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, Brian Swimme, Rachel Carson, Thomas Berry and others were saying and took inspiration and courage from this.  In spite of the fact that Ireland as a nation is considered green, it is in fact far from it. In the last number of years during the Celtic Tiger pressure on wildlife and ecosystems became phenomenal with transport, urban development and intensive management of agricultural land being the drivers of biodiversity loss in this country. Developing land became the norm; hedgerows and habits were destroyed without a second thought, overgrazing and intensive farming caused soil erosion, large roads fragmented natural habitats, water is being polluted. Human want, need and greed has taken centre stage at great cost to other species and ultimately to ourselves. We are sawing off the limb we are sitting on.

The Trust was granted charitable status in 2007 and we were gifted our first land in 2010. As well as our primary goal of saving land, we consider education to be of paramount importance.  GSLT has built a vision of systemic change that involves every member of the Trust as well as everybody in Ireland.  GSLT would like to see a time when concern for the homeless will be extended to embrace all species, when poverty can be seen in its broadest terms acknowledging the huge loss of biodiversity and habitat thus honouring and supporting interconnectedness and all it implies and promoting systemic change accordingly.

Our Mission is to protect Irish ecosystems and inspire people to take a proactive role in preservation. To this end we aim to create safe wildlife corridors running the length and breadth of Ireland.  Aware of how changes in attitude and behaviour come slowly, GSLT has come up with some creative ways to raise the awareness of the public:  The Story of the Universe – an interactive, cross-curricular programme of music and script set to old Irish Melodies.  Environmental Studies Workbooks for Adult Education a cross-curricular programme, and are currently completing a Transition Year programme.

We want every man women and child involved in this! This is the responsibility of our generation not the next.

Sheila Gallagher and Melissa Griffith

To find out more about the Green Sod Land Trust visit www.greensodlandtrust.ie.

As part of the 2011 Finalists Programme, we’ll be giving all of the Finalists the chance to share information about their projects in their own words. The eight Finalists are taking part in a three month evaluation and support programme, through which they will each receive funding and support to the value of €25,000. This provides us with the opportunity to further assess the eight projects prior to the final selection of the three 2011 winners in October.  Come October, the three Award winners will receive an award to the value of €170,000 over a two-three year period, which will enable them to increase the impact of the work that they are doing in Ireland. Today, we have the pleasure of introducing you to Joan Freeman of Pieta House.

“With five centres in Dublin and Limerick, and over 60 staff, Pieta House now stands as a testament to the hard work of hundreds of people and a source of hope for those who are suicidal and who self-harm. Pieta House, which provides counselling, support and advice for those who are actively suicidal, who may be contemplating suicide, or who self-harm, was created after a personal tragedy and the realisation that there was a very serious gap in services.   It is the only service in Ireland for people who self-harm or who are actively suicidal other than A & E.

In 2003, while working as a psychologist and running my  own counselling business,  I was inspired to create Pieta House, while flicking through a book called ‘The Seven Sorrows of Mary” and was taken by a sculpture pictured in the book and of its symbolism. ‘The Pieta’ is a renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo that depicts the body of Jesus on the lap of his mother Mary after the Crucifixion. There is a lovely symbolic story behind it. He [Michelangelo] made Mary’s body bigger than that of her son. He made her shoulders very broad and her lap deep so she could embrace his death. It was a light bulb moment that allowed me to immediately think of a way to create a service that would be strong enough to provide the same support for some of the most vulnerable in society.  I felt that what we needed was a service that embraces the broken lives of people in our community. It was really one of those flashlight moments and it started from there.

Once that thought had entered my mind, it would not leave and I felt compelled to close my business and focus completely on the creation of Pieta House, a decision that was so easy to make. I didn’t see any difficulty at all! It just didn’t come into the equation. This was all I knew I had to do and failure was a word that never entered my mind.

It took three years for the idea to become a reality. First, I felt I had to research the topic of suicide in greater detail. Even in my own practice, we were always afraid of dealing with anybody who had suicidal tendencies, so I immersed myself in the subject of suicide and self-harm. To ensure that Pieta House would last longer than most services or charities, I embarked on a course of diligent and meticulous research and preparatory work. I had to do a sort of feasibility study to see was if it possible to have a service like this, and then this was followed by  a business plan.

Many difficulties presented themselves while I was endeavouring to establish a new organisation. Inevitably funding presented itself as one of the most difficult obstacles. Having initially received no public funding, I put my own home on the line by borrowing from the bank and using it as collateral. Despite this risk, I saw this simply as a necessary step towards the ultimate goal.   I asked my husband Pat about it obviously, but he knew I was so blinkered about it at this point.  So on the 19th January 2006 we started off with six people and we now have 60 staff.  In spite of the initial success the difficulty of funding never went away and today it costs €1.3 million annually to provide therapy completely free of charge to those who need it across the five Pieta House centres.

A staggering 85 per cent of the €1.3 million would be down to fundraising and we don’t have a fundraiser.  But it’s also down to the huge generosity of people, people randomly hearing about us and doing a fundraiser for us. It’s not easy, though, and we still manage from month to month but the journey has been miraculous in that way as many charities close down in the first couple of years.

Historically Ireland has had a particularly complicated and difficult relationship with suicide. Despite an improved awareness of suicide in Irish society through personal experience and National Office of Suicide Prevention research, there still appears to be an unwillingness to openly discuss or debate the issue. In the past, a stigma attached to suicide led to under-reporting in coroner reports. Every day more people die through suicide than road traffic accident, yet suicide prevention budgets do not reflect this. With suicide in Ireland on the rise, it is very clear that there is a need for services like Pieta House. In 2009 there were 527 reported deaths by suicide, an increase of 24 per cent on the previous year. I feel that attitudes need to change if Ireland is to properly deal with the issue of suicide.

One of the obstacles to Pieta House is getting people to see that behind suicide is not always a psychiatric illness but usually a very human experience. We see that most people who come to us have no psychiatric history but the reaction to a life event such as bereavement, or a relationship break up, bullying, all those sort of things. It’s trying to get that message across because there is still a stigma attached. Once people start realising what it is, then we can do something concrete about it.

Looking to the future, I have grand plans for Pieta House! I hope to open more centres in Cork and Galway and aim to have a Pieta service within 100 km of everyone living in Ireland. Beyond that who knows? I already have a vision of a Pieta in Florida!! Already we receive emails from all over the world asking for the location of the nearest Pieta House. My main desire of course is that many more than the 4,000 users of Pieta House will get the help they need in the very near future.”

For more information about Pieta House please see www.pieta.ie. You can congratulate Joan on becoming a Finalist with Social Entrepreneurs Ireland on Twitter @PietaHouse