REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE YOUNG SOCIAL INNOVATORS ANNUAL SHOWCASE 2008 RDS, DUBLIN
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE YOUNG SOCIAL INNOVATORS ANNUAL SHOWCASE 2008 RDS, DUBLIN WEDNESDAY, 7 MAY 2008
To be a social innovator at any age is to be an architect of decency, of fairness, of equality, of good neighbourliness; to be a person who sees gaps in our care for one another and to be someone who does not wait for someone else to fill the gap.
Social innovators make great citizens and Ireland has had some amazing examples of such people, from Edmund Ignatius Rice, Catherine McAuley, Daniel O’Connell, Horace Plunkett and many more whose care for the betterment of others was allied to a powerful, fresh imagination which quite literally changed the course of history. This forum would surely have made all those historical figures proud, for today we have a generation of young,social innovators and this is their showcase. Here are the problem-solvers of today and tomorrow. Here are people in a hurry to make their contribution, people who take an educated and active interest in all that is going on around them in the wider community and the wider world and who take responsibility on themselves for making things better. More than that, you bring your individual and collective imaginations deliberately to bear on that process of improving our world. You are a remarkable force for good, witnesses to unselfishness, champions of solidarity and of co-responsibility, harbingers of a future to look forward to.
You are the warp and weft of Ireland’s future. What is in your hearts and heads will shape that future. It was Sister Stanislaus Kennedy who first had such faith in your untapped talent for social innovation that this forum was created and it has quite simply been an astounding and outstanding success. A big thanks to Sr Stan, to Rachel Collier and to the national network of volunteers, students and supporters which sustains the Young Social Innovators program so successfully.
Each year the winners visit Áras an Uachtaráin giving me a chance to celebrate with them but this day gives me a chance to celebrate with all of you for while there will be winners, there are no losers - everything you do builds us up humanly, everything you do as young social innovators infuses our country with a positive and generous creativity. Everything you do makes us very, very proud, for through your lives, we see this prosperous, confident Ireland continuing its journey towards the completion of our republican ideal - to be a place where all the children of the nation are cherished equally. The ambition we have for ourselves we also have for our very unequal world. There is no shortcut to that world, only a tough and uncompromising journey made by people who stand solidly for the very best of values, people who dare to care. YSI has produced an army of them.
Over 20,000 young people have been involved in the four years since YSI started, that is twenty thousand of the finest young citizens any country could desire. It is the legendary social anthropologist Margaret Mead who said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world - indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”.
I thank you for the gift of hope that you have brought to today’s Ireland. It has been a great pleasure to spend this time with you today, to marvel at your projects and to leave so reassured about Ireland’s future.