SpunOut.ie Blog
November, 2007
SpunOut.ie scoops top award!
Success at the prestigious Golden Spider Awards.
The SpunOut.ie staff team were out in force (pics coming soon) for the 2007 Golden Spider internet Awards on Thursday November 22nd.
We were delighted to scoop the award for ‘best community or charity website’, which was accepted by our tech wizard extraordinaire Sean Bryceland.
The Eircom Golden Spider Awards honour Irish individuals and organisations for their outstanding achievements online and celebrate the successes of the Irish Internet and digital media.
The Golden Spiders are considered a mark of excellence in web based business strategies and are commonly known as Ireland’s internet ‘oscars’.
All in all it’s been a great year for SpunOut.ie and this award has topped it off. 2008 looks set to be even better.
Bring it on!
Calling all SpunOut.ie contributors
Tell us what you think and get writing!
November is ticking by and every shop in Ireland is gearing up to blind us with Christmas craziness. Here at SpunOut.ie headquarters, we don’t have a Christmas tree lighting up the office and there are no Santa hats yet, but we ARE planning the articles and factsheets that will be highlighted on the website during December and January.
We’re looking for your ideas about what should be highlighted on the website in December and the New Year (such as loneliness, mistletoe tactics, depression, family survival….) and we’re also looking for young people to write opinion pieces and true life stories about their wintery experiences.
For example, you might want to write humour pieces, boredom beaters, reviews of Christmas films, eco pressie tips, shopping survival, real life stories, rants, raves, opinion pieces on what’s likely to be the charts’ Christmas number One, your thoughts on the likes of the Spice Girls and Take That getting back together… phew, the list goes on!
Contact anna@spunout.ie if you’ve got ideas for articles and want to help prep SpunOut.ie for Christmas cheer!
Find out more about contributing to SpunOut.ie.
SpunOut.ie October digest
Blog: What we were up to during October.
As part of our efforts to let everyone know what goes on behind the scenes here at SpunOut.ie HQ we’ll be posting a brief monthly digest for each month.
A little belated but here’s a quick snapshot of what we were up to in October.
All the usual
We were busy as usual answering queries, zillions of emails, accounting and administration, meetings, filing reports, managing the office, fundraising...all that exciting and not so exciting stuff that comes with running a growing organisation.
Managing and developing SpunOut.ie
Over 20 new youth written articles, action opportunities, true-life stories and factsheets were uploaded to SpunOut.ie during October. Most exciting was the spOOooooky revamp of the SpunOut.ie frontpage to celebrate Halloween, along with a focus on party survival and alcohol awareness.
A brand new Gallery section also went online this month, featuring pics and videos showcasing some of the SpunOut.ie adventure to date! Also in October, SpunOut.ie Youth Board member Marie Duffy reported back from her travels with the European Youth Press in Macedonia.
We continue to moderate the SpunOut.ie discussion forums on a daily basis, to review the service database, and to link in with young people via Bebo and MySpace.
Fundraising success
October was a biggie for us in terms of fundraising. We succeeded in securing a major 3 year philanthropic investment and finalised terms with the Health Services Executive towards a 3 year partnership. This signalled a breakthrough after 3 years of development without any core investment. With this funding and the many other opportunities that are on the horizon, the future is well and truly lookin’ bright for SpunOut.ie.
More good news: awards
We received news that we have been selected as a European representative at the prestigious Global Knowledge Partnership Conference in Malaysia this coming December and we also got news that we’ve been short-listed for an Eircom Golden Spider award. Fingers crossed for October 22nd at the Golden Spider awards ceremony.
Developing our team
As well as bringing on board several new SpunOut.ie youth contributors we ran a recruitment campaign for a new Administrator to come in and manage the growing admin needs of our Galway office. We also put out tenders for freelance discussion forum moderators with a background in youth health and support.
Partnerships
We held the first meeting of our new National Advisory Network. The meeting was attended by representatives of over 15 national organisations and projects. This new network lets us share ideas and learning that will help make SpunOut.ie much bigger and better. We also took part in positive discussions and meetings with the National Centre for Technology in Education, the Action on Suicide Alliance, the Technology for Wellbeing group, MediaForum, the SPHE Support Service, Ogilvy, the NOSP Mental Health Campaign Steering Group and Samaritans amongst others. Meanwhile, we continued to set-up and explore international links with like-minded groups.
Promotion
We fired off dozens of promo packs to schools, colleges and youth clubs throughout the country, Youth Editor Paddy Duffy appeared on the RTE Ryan Tubridy show and Ruairí McKiernan was interviewed on Spin FM. We also did lots of research into developing our new marketing strategy. We were a partner in the new HSE ‘your mental health’ Mental Health Awareness Campaign that featured a TV and radio advertising campaign as well as billboards and online marketing.
Out and about outreach
The team were out and about a fair bit in October with presentations and workshops:
- by Anna, Susie and Andrew at the Youth Work Ireland conference in Dublin
- by Ian Howley at the Mental Health Ireland seminar in Athlone
- by Ruairi and Marie at the Teaching Council of Ireland conference in Galway
- by Susie, Anna and Orla at the Union of Secondary School Students day in Dublin
- by Jessica McArdle and Marie Duffy at the European Youth Press gathering in Macedonia
- a guest marketing lecture NUIG and a presentation to the Western Family Resource Centre Network by Ruairi
- a stall at the National Youth Council of Ireland ‘meangingful consultation’ conference in Dublin and
- representation at the European Conference on Public Health in Finland by one of our board.
Youth participation
Youth Board representations included Paddy Duffy on the RTE Turbidy Show, Andrew Gibbons at the Youth Work Ireland conference, Orla Price at the USS day, Marie Duffy at the Teaching Council of Ireland conference and with Jessica McArdle at the European Youth Press gathering in Macedonia and finally Ian Howley at the Mental Health Ireland day in Athlone.
Spotlight on suicide
Blog: SpunOut.ie Youth editor Ian Howley on BBC One tonight.
Following on from the success of the Tough Times campaign, SpunOut.ie representative, Ian Howley will tell his story on the BBC One Spotlight programme on Tuesday 6th November at 10.35pm. The programme investigates the social networking sites that may expose vulnerable young people to harm.
22 year old Ian talks about his teenage suicide attempts, his journey to survival and how his advocacy work and involvement with SpunOut.ie has helped him.
Watch the Spotlight programme online.
Help and support:
Northern Ireland: We are developing a full range of Northern Ireland support links on SpunOut.ie. In the meantime, visit the MindingYourHead website for contact details of support organisations in Northern Ireland.
Spinning out in Europe
Blog: SpunOut.ie youth editor Paddy Duffy goes travelling.
Regular readers of SpunOut.ie might have been thinking over the last months: “I say, what’s happened to that Duffy fellow who used to write here, the man who was always going on about ASBO’s and David Tennant and criticising the government, he’s not dead is he?”
OK, it’s rather unlikely anyone thought that, but just in case you were, I’ve been working the European Youth Conference circuit of late. Seriously. It all started off when I attended a Léargas seminar about continental youth exchanges, and they asked me if I was interested in being Ireland’s young journalist at European Youth Week in Brussels. Needless to say I was on a plane to Belgium by the time the sentence was finished and it was undoubtedly a highlight of the summer.
But that wasn’t it. I started writing for their website, youthweek.eu, and through that came the opportunity to attend the Portuguese EU Presidency’s youth event in Lisbon in September, as a group of three journalists. Crikey, this whole youth journalism thing was getting really interesting! It ran from the 14th to the 17th, and as nice as would have been to treat the weekend as a holiday of sorts, it was off to work pretty soon off the bat. It was my job to do a daily update blog and write cover stories on the different working groups who were working towards a collective resolution to be declared at the end, which will form an important part of future EU policy.
The event was good for some of the very interesting results that came out of it. There seemed to be two schools of thought emerging. Those who had become exasperated at multiple summits and conferences that hadn’t really seen much progress on the ground as a result, and those who thought that these type of things were crucial for establishing links and having the EU onside was a big benefit. The full story can be seen here but whatever your thoughts, it was a terribly interesting experience.
Just a few days after Lisbon I was on my travels again, for what was a thought-provoking few days in London. Along with about twenty others (one being SpunOut.ie’s very own Youth Editor Orla Price) from around the UK and Ireland, I was selected by The Carnegie Trust to take part in an inquiry into the future of Civil Society over the next thirty years.
Thankfully my initial fears that we were selected as some sort of nuclear fallout contingency plan came to naught as we discussed the details of the weekend.
It started off on a conceptual footing (we had a presentation about untangling the future of desire and the future of fate, and how sometimes we imagine the future is affected more by what we want to see than what is realistic…it was fascinating!) We then broke into groups and had great discussions about the issues affecting us in our areas, and then about how we imagine those problems will pan out, and finally how we’d like to see them pan out.
The main thing we learned is that, as you might expect, accurately predicting what might happen years from now is difficult, so there was a lot of emphasis put on what we can do to affect the future positively.
Continental travel notwithstanding, I also got the opportunity to meet some truly great people, and hopefully with continued contact we will be able to have a significant effect on the future, so that this just won’t be a month of good memories.
By: Paddy Duffy
