PROGRAMMES

Making an IMPACT! in Ballyfermot - 2007 IMPACT! project

Young People and the Media

In 2007, Young Christian Workers ran an IMPACT! programme with the Transition Year students of Caritas College, Ballyfermot, looking at "How Young People are treated through Media".

With support from the teaching staff (Maureen Casey, Tracey Lowry, Paddy Moore, Jennifer Egan & Tony Corbett, Transition Year Co-ordinator), the work got underway.

Enquiries into positive and negative press on young people

The team scanned magazines and newspapers to compare positive and negative press on young people and how young people see themselves. The results of their enquiries were remarkable and provide a real insight into how young people feel that there is a lack of recognition for all the good that they actually do.

Look at the results here; there is a real contradiction between how the Media portrays young people and how they perceive themselves:

How young people see themselves...
in School, clubs, fundraising, helpful, enthusiastic, volunteering, Youth leaders, community, voluntary work, sensible, dependable, useful

How the Media portray young people...
immature, on drugs, vandals, sex, teenage pregnancy, ASBOs, bitchy, violent, alcos, drop-outs, scangers, gangs, guns, bullies, robbers, disrespectful, suicidal, rallying cars

During this project the students were visited by a member of the TTV Team in RTÉ to hear their views on young people & the Media.

Watching too much TV?

The group worked extremely well and really began to question themselves on the whole area of Media. From this they decided to look at how many hours they actually spent watching TV, the results of which even astounded the teachers as they were also asked to submit the amount of hours that they watch television. The class as a whole watched approx of 437 hours 25 mins of television, that's a weekly average of 16 hours 20 mins per person. The most popular programmes watched in the group were Desperate Housewives, Eastenders, Coronation Street, and all music channels from MTV Base to Magic and Kerrang.

Designing their own magazine / newspaper

The next topic the group tackled was the designing of their own magazine / newspaper. The magazines were submitted to the teachers who awarded a prize to the winning group.

The students had themselves suggested that they would like to create there own Magazines / broadsheets in which they included articles, pictures and quotes. Each group created their own sense of style regarding their project. Every member of the group was involved in all stages of the project from the planning, writing, editing, and the mounting. The projects had various names from Ballya News, Dublin Times, 3T, Celebs on the Scene, T.Y. Times, Hush, and all varied, from where to get a great pair of shoes to who bought Padraig Pearse Letters.

The final projects were submitted to the teachers who after lots of deliberations had the hard task of picking a winner. The winning project was entitled3T Times which stood for Teen Talk Time and included articles on alcohol dependency, school projects, and also provided helpline details for various organisations. The winning members of the group were Ashley, Helena, Natalie, Shannon and Ciara; they all put a lot of effort researching the articles, which showed in the end result.

Project outcomes

After 12 weeks working on the project we were all proud of all the great work that had been done regarding the IMPACT! programme and the Media projects. A certificate of participation was presented to each participant.

Quotes from the participants:

"I have gained much more information on Media through this project and on other peoples views of the Media"
"We saw how the Media views teenagers"

"I learned a lot through the Media's perception of youth"