REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE UNESCO CHAIR FOR CHILDREN, YOUTH AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE UNESCO CHAIR FOR CHILDREN, YOUTH AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, NUI GALWAY
Dia dhaoíbh a chairde. Cuirim fáilte romhaibh go léir atá i láthair anseo. Tá an-áthas orm a bheith in bhur measc anseo ar an ócáid speisialta seo.
It is always a joy to come to Galway and to UCG, but it is a particular pleasure to share this day when we launch a new and unique partnership with the inauguration of NUI Galway’s UNESCO Chair for Children, Youth and Civic Engagement. I thank Dr. James Browne for the invitation.
This is the first UNESCO Chair in the State. That it is in NUIG tells us just how respected, admired and trusted this University is outside of Ireland. The Chair was not created in a vacuum. It has developed out of the remarkable work undertaken by the Child and Family Research Centre which I had the great pleasure in opening in 2007. With UNESCO’s imprimatur, the work of the Centre moves right into the global spotlight as a world-class centre of academic gravity in the field of Children, Youth and Civic Engagement. Today’s launch confers a singular honour as well as a profound responsibility on this University. The Chair is taking on the challenge of deepening and broadening its noble and so necessary work of creating a world that is careful with childhood. The 1916 Proclamation committed us to creating a nation in which all the children were cherished equally. You are the leaders whose wise and scholarly input will help us to create that republic and to share its pathways with other nations which struggle as we do with the devastating reality of lost childhoods, family dysfunction, disaffected youth and the challenge of harnessing civic society in an all-out effort to lay the groundwork for a humanly decent future for the children, who are the future.
The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once wrote that “The task of the University is the creation of the future”. From a brief period of remarkable growth during which this generation achieved the two things, peace and prosperity, which eluded every single past generation, we now face into a country and a world riddled with economic uncertainty. It is a volatile moment for there is angst and righteous anger at the behaviour of the few which has reduced our standing internationally. Yet we simply cannot allow ourselves to be defined in this way for this is not who or what we are. We are a people who have radically altered the narrative of Ireland and who, despite the faltering prosperity process, will do what it takes to restore stability and growth - for these things are not just about economics and staggering figures, they are about the lived lives of men, women and children. The pressures and strains of these times are visible and tangible in their lives as they cope with unemployment or the threat of it, reduced income, lowered standards of living, and the thinning-out of opportunity that once abounded. This Chair could not be coming on-stream at a more important time for this is the current tumult through which your work here in Galway must navigate a realistic, grounded and inclusive pathway, informed by professionalism and innovation, as well as confidence, reassurance and hope, for our children, families and youth of today.
A lot has been written and spoken about the need for the voices of children to be not only heard but also listened to and acted upon. They are not mere spectators at any of this and the tide of voices suddenly raised in consternation must inevitably be reshaping the world our children are inhabiting. Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, enjoins us to recognise and promote the concept of children as active agents in their lives. Here in Galway you are helping to ensure that their voices are heard above the cacophony of adult commentators who are now dominating the public space. The cost of not doing so will likely come back to haunt us as a civil society and a golden opportunity to move towards a fuller and more inclusive wisdom will have been missed.
To that very end the Centre has forged dynamic relationships with Foróige, one of the country’s leading voluntary youth organisations and the Community Knowledge Initiative, NUI Galway’s innovative forum for facilitating civic engagement, as well as the HSE. This model of partnership, so well plugged in to local communities as well as with the world of the decision–makers, enhances not only the quality, professionalism and timeliness of the ultimate policy response but also its sensitivity to new and evolving on-the-ground problems as they arise in the field.
The aims and approaches of each Chair in the worldwide UNESCO network, while they are different and the host institutions are diverse in form, function and location, nevertheless are all underpinned and inspired by the ideals, ethics and values which infuse UNESCO. Education, as we in Ireland know only too well, is the key to social and economic development, the key to the kind of cultural curiosity that makes friends rather than enemies of culturally diverse strangers around the world. So many children will learn that too late, when in adulthood they reflect on a landscape of wasted talents and opportunities that was not of their making but was their unfortunate inherited lot.
UNESCO is the champion of change for children, the advocate through whose efforts each generation tries to shift the weight of skewed history from off the shoulders of the young. NUIG is the careful and caring hands of UNESCO’s work.
I wish Professor Dolan, all his colleagues and partners, here in Ireland and internationally, huge success in developing this work that is so essential to peace of heart for individuals and the full harvesting of human potential. I congratulate him on his appointment, an historic appointment for NUIG and for Ireland and so I congratulate the Centre and the entire University community, whose hard-earned reputation made UNESCO’s choice so easy.
Comhghairdeas libh arís, agus go raibh maith agaibh go léir agus go n-éiri go geal libh amach anseo.