This article is from page 38 of the 2011-06-21 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 38 JPG
THE contribution of young people in Cloughleigh to the development of a new youth and community facility was hailed at the official opening of The Junction on Saturday.
A team of volounteers, comprised mainly of young people from the area, played an important role in determining the need for such a facility when it was first proposed in 2006.
Among those present at Saturday’s opening were Clare Youth Service volounteers Victoria Hart, Aishagh Faithfull and Barry McDonagh.
Work on the project started in 2006 with the group conducting surveys and gathering the views of teenagers in Cloughleigh.
Aishagh (21) explained, “We’ve been involved since the start in planning the building and deciding where it was going to be and what is was going to be for. We were trying to get the young people on board to help us out. We knew from the start that there was a need for it.”
According to Barry (22), there was a clear need for more youth and community facilities in the Cloughleigh area. He said, “We knew ourselves because there wasn’t really anything around for us. I’m delighted with the way it turned out. I think it looks lovely. We can’t wait to get everything going; all the programmes up and running. It’s for the whole town and county not just the area around here.” Youth worker Tommy O’Hara has worked with the project’s core group of volounteers, helping them to get young people from the area and around Ennis to participate in programmes run at The Junction. He said, “The next step really is to try and get young people into the building and develop the café. My own specific job is to develop smaller project groups within the actual centre, to go out and physically recruit them [young people] and bring them up through in much the same way as the core groups came up through the youth service. That’s what we always aim and strive for, to bring young people to that level.” Tommy, who is also from the Cloughleigh area, said the building will serve a wider community purpose. He explained, “We definitely are looking at an inter-generational programme as well that would incorporate older people and young people together, such as gardening, computers or whatever that might be.”