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History of SpunOut.ie
Find out more about what we do at SpunOut.ie.
It all started when...
SpunOut.ie (which operates under the Community Creations Ltd. registered charity) was set-up by a team of young graduates in early 2004 with a vision of creating innovative solutions that ‘empower people to create positive personal and social change’. Initial work included campaign and consultancy work, whilst developing SpunOut.ie as a new ‘national youth website’ with the support of the local health board and various youth and community partners.
From an initial home-office base and with no major investment, the organisation soon established an office (‘The Beehive’) in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal. With the launch (May 2005) and subsequent rapid success of SpunOut.ie, the organisation later relocated to Galway (July 2007) and then more recently to Dublin (2011). These relocations were primarily motivated by organisational demands such as accessing appropriate infrastructure, youth populations, and funding, development and media opportunities.
Tied in with the Galway move was a decision to re-focus completely on developing SpunOut.ie as a flagship programme and to re-brand our public identity to ‘SpunOut.ie’ while deciding to postpone any future additional social change programme development. This tied in with a new strategy that attracted three year investment support from the HSE (both Health Promotion and National Suicide Office) and from the One Foundation.
With this the organisation went on to grow its staff team to 7 full-time members (from 3), develop a panel of freelance, part-time and volunteer workers, and build a new board of directors. SpunOut.ie has also won numerous national awards, achieved recognition from politicians and the national media, and from throughout through the youth, health and community sectors. The organisation secured support from community fundraising, from the Vodafone Foundation, the Dormant Accounts Fund, the National Lottery, Google Ireland, and more recently the Atlantic Philanthropies, amongst others.
SpunOut.ie success
Central to all of this has been the huge success SpunOut.ie has achieved in reaching, engaging and empowering young people mainly aged 16-25. By developing a world class website for ‘youth health, information and activism’ SpunOut.ie now provides over 3000 health, lifestyle and citizenship articles and true-life stories, over 130 videos, moderated peer-led discussion forums, sign-posting to over 1,000 support services, a platform for youth media publishing, a listing of relevant civic events and opportunities, and a platform for youth campaigns and advocacy. More recently, and with the support of the Atlantic Philanthropies, SpunOut.ie has been developing a civic action programme that includes the ‘Academy of Activism’, the ‘SpunOut Super-Hero’ mini-grant scheme, and the emerging ‘SpunOut.ie Youth Summit’ event, all of which are aimed at supporting young aspiring change-makers.
SpunOut.ie now reaches over 600,000 unique users per year and is therefore perhaps the most used youth resource in the country and remains the only comprehensive online resource for youth health, lifestyle and citizenship.
A new side-initiative called ‘POSSIBILITIES’ (www.possibilities.ie) was also recently developed in partnership with Afri and Children in Crossfire, which has demonstrated huge potential as a new model for accessible civic engagement and activism.
