REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF FORÓIGE’S SPECIAL PROGRAMME
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF FORÓIGE’S SPECIAL PROGRAMME TO MARK THE NEW MILLENNIUM, MONDAY, 4TH OCTOBER 1999
Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen. I am delighted to be here with you today and I wish to thank Michael Cleary for inviting me to launch Foróige’s programme to mark the new Millennium, “Challenge 2000”.
This programme is an invitation to a deepening and a re-ordering of the relationships between young people themselves, and between them and the community generally. Foroige’s role in this exciting journey into the new millennium with all its as yet unwritten, unscripted days will be as leader, facilitator, as a place where the voices of the young are heard, listened to and have real effect. Foróige has recognised that at this time - as we bid farewell to a century, a millennium and greet the new – we are presented with a unique and unmissable opportunity to contemplate and craft a humanly decent vision for the future.
That vision is “Foróige Challenge 2000” and I would like to congratulate Michael Cleary, Gerry McDonald and Cormac Forkan for their dedication and hard work in producing the report and also the many people who helped in the research - leaders, parents, community members, staff and of course our young – each making their important contribution to its publication.
Yesterday at the National Children’s Day award ceremony in Dublin Castle I presented ten bravery awards to children whose courage in the face of adversity opens a humbling window on childhood and its often less than golden realities. Our young people live many different kinds of lives. Few are without very stretching challenges - for some the challenge is in simply finding the discipline to do homework after a tiring day at school, for others it is nursing a chronically ill parent, or suffering bullying or friendlessness in silence, or watching grinding poverty envelop a home, or overcoming a disability, even facing your own or a loved one’s death. Young people live complex, difficult lives miles away from the easy stereotypes which so often gloss over the realities they have to live with, deal with and try to make sense of.
This special programme recognises the great energy and vitality that our youth possess, thecourage they have, the ambitions for themselves and their commitment to improving the life chances for themselves and their peers.
They say that what is learnt in childhood is engraved on stone and for some children the engraver can be a clumsy and a careless adult or a clumsy and careless society. A good engraver can take a rough stone and skilfully transform it into the sparkling diamond it was always capable of becoming in the right hands. Too many lives have been lived untransformed, their genius, their talent, blighted by to paraphrase Brian Keenan - “a careless cradling”
This society of ours based as it is on a written constitution which acknowledges the equality of each human being, is one which has to have at its core a dynamic, an insatiable energy which drives it to ensure that the potential of each young person is unlocked, is given the space and the help to blossom. We have all seen what individuals have become capable of in this modern high achieving Ireland. We have seen how many hearts and homes and hopes have been transformed by the widening of educational opportunities, by these new generations and their “intelligences, brightened and unmannerly as crowbars” as Seamus Heaney described them in From the Canton of Expectation.
Since I became President I’ve met many, many groups of young people, both at Áras an Uachtaráin and around the country, deeply committed to doing good in their community. They know that they have a responsibility to themselves to do justice to their lives and talents by developing them well and using them well, in developing themselves as fulfilled human beings and in the service to their community.
It is important that the rest of us do everything we can to grow and nurture that caring, that we are supportive and encouraging and praising of these wonderful young citizens, whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself. There is a reservoir of wisdom in the old Irish saying “Mol an óige agus tiochfaidh sé”. As a people we have not always been good at praise and we have suffered as a result. We need self-confident young people, who believe in themselves, in their giftedness and in their duty of care for others. The research findings in this report show how blessed this country is to have young people hungry to earn that praise and willing to do the work which earns self-respect and the admiration of others.
This report gives us an important insight into the many concerns that our young people struggle with, relationships, values, how they fit into society – all very real and important issues. It is surely a source of pride to us that Foróige has provided guidance and direction to our young Irish people for almost half a century. Now you have charted a path which will take us well into the next century. We know where young people want that path to go - to an inclusive world where all are in the mainstream, no-one sits miserably on the margins watching life go past. We know that will happen and will only happen if people make it happen but we also know Foroige is committed to making it happen. You have every right to be proud of your organisation in the knowledge that it not only makes a very real contribution to youth services today in Ireland but is preparing the ground, sowing the seeds for a better Ireland for the children of the third millennium.
I congratulate everyone associated with the Research Report and the development of the Millennium Programme.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir agus go n-eirí go geal leis an gclár dhá mhíle agus an bhliain speisialta atá le teacht.