170 WORKSHOPS COMPLETE!

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Today was our very last workshop of the school year! 

This marked the 170th ShoutOut workshop since September. 

 

170 workshops

5000 school students

67 secondary schools

17 counties

Delivered by 65 trained volunteers

 

This represents over 1000 working hours from our workshop facilitators and the Directorial team, all of whom volunteer their time. 

66% of our workshops took place outside Co. Dublin 

We also trained 150 secondary school teachers on LGBTQ+ issues and how to be ally to their LGBTQ+ students. 

This would not be possible without our fantastic volunteers, the wonderful teachers who welcome us into their schools, and the incredible sponsors who support us. A huge thank you to Fidelity Investments, Oracle, Ulster Bank, Dropbox, Intertech, Lush and all the individual donations which have made the above possible. 

We cannot thank everyone enough. 

Yours,

Bella, Clare, Declan & Eoin

 

 

Fidelity Donates Furniture to our Office!

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THANK You to Fidelity Insurance for their donation of lovely furniture for our office. Mitchell Cash, HR Director, and personal hero, led the charge on this partnership. Previously ShoutOut has worked with Fidelity's PRIDE Employee Resource Group and Learning & Development teams giving sessions to Fidelity Parents and Allies of LGBTQ+ children. As you can see from our smiles we're delighted with the gift :)

Pictured: Mitchell Cash, Eoin O'Liathain, Clare Ni Cheallaigh, and Bella FitzPatrick.

Pictured: Mitchell Cash, Eoin O'Liathain, Clare Ni Cheallaigh, and Bella FitzPatrick.

2017: New Year, New Workshops!

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We're kicking off 2017 with 40 workshops booked in January alone!

These workshops are taking place in 15 schools across 11 counties on the Island of Ireland! 

In January alone we will have reached about 1200 students with the message that it's OK to be who you are, and it's not OK to bully those who differ from you. 

We set out with one simple goal; to make it a little easier to be LGBTQ+ in secondary school. It can be a tough time for any young person and many LGBTQ+ people are struggling with their identity and the prospect of coming out.

We wanted to educate young people about language in the LGBTQ+ community so they can have respectful dialogue, and create an environment where diversity is celebrated. 

With our specially designed, interactive hour long workshops which are FREE to schools on the Island of Ireland, we are working towards this goal, one workshop at a time. 

If you want to find out how you can be involved email Bella@ShoutOut.ie

 

ShoutOut launches in Northern Ireland!

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We are delighted to announce that ShoutOut workshops will now be available in schools across Northern Ireland, in partnership with Cara-Friend, which runs the LGBTQ+ youth service in the North. This new partnership will allow us to reach more schools and students on an all-Ireland basis, working with our partners in the North to make the secondary school experience of LGBTQ+ young people more positive and more inclusive.

Our first workshop took place on Septmber 14th in St. Joseph’s Boys’ High School in Newry, and this followed on from taking part in Newry Pride earlier this month – our first in Pride in Northern Ireland. It’s another big step for ShoutOut as we kick off our fourth year in schools, since launching in 2013. The 2016-17 school year will see us deliver workshops to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in all corners of Ireland. We are very excited about our new partnership and about reaching more students in schools than ever before!

“We’re very excited to be bring our workshop model to Northern Irish schools in partnership with Cara-Friend” says Bella FitzPatrick, Managing Director of ShoutOut. “The workshop in Newry earlier this month is hopefully the first of many over the coming year.”

“We were delighted to have ShoutOut deliver their first workshop in the North here at St. Joseph’s” says Declan Murray, Principal. “It’s a great honour to have been the first school to have received one, and it was received brilliantly by the students involved.”

If you would like to request a workshop for your school in Northern Ireland email Declan Meehan on declan.meehan@cara-friend.org.uk to organise! 

We're back!

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Summer's over, schools are back and ShoutOut is launching for it's 4th year! This time bigger than ever, featuring:

  • A Newly Designed Workshop (Produced by an external professional)
  • A Larger Team
  • An October Launch Date

Our mission is and always has been to make schools a welcoming place for LGBT youth. The Marriage Equality referendum this year helped this more than we could ever hope to by creating conversations in every school in Ireland. Yet despite the victorious result, harmful campaigning in every county and the fact that 37.93% of voters said no reminds us that things could and should be better.

That's why ShoutOut will continue its work in engaging young people, teaching about sexuality and diversity, and working towards ensuring that no young person in this country feels shame about their identity.

A Volunteer's View

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I first came out to my best friend in second year. I was sitting in the back of a Science class with her and I wrote on a piece of paper in code and passed it over to her. I was terrified. I had no idea how she was going to react. I had asked beneath the piece of code “Do you understand?” and she replied “You’re a lesbian”. I replied yes and she didn’t mind, though I struggled to look at her throughout the conversation. I found out afterwards that when I told her that I had something important to tell her the only thing she could think was that I was pregnant.

The reason I was so scared was because of the social stigma that floated around my single-sex, catholic school in relation to the LGBTQ+ community. If you didn’t shave you were gay. If a teacher gave too much homework, that was so gay. If you, like one of my friends, posted a photo on facebook of you and your boyfriend someone might comment beneath “GGGAAAAAAYYYYYY”. Everything remotely negative or sappy was gay. Many people in the school had no problem with the LGBTQ+ community. They knew little about it but had nothing against it. They were just spreading words and phrases they’d been hearing. They didn’t think about it. Nevertheless, due to these homophobic slurs I went through secondary school terrified of other people’s opinions and never knowing how people would react when I came out. I did come out to most of my year and most were fine with it but I still felt nervous around the topic and about what people might be saying behind my back.

I left school then and went to college. In college it didn’t matter that I was gay. I made lots of friends inside and outside the LGBTQ+ community. I felt free and happy. Then my debs came along. I decided that I wanted to bring a girl. I asked my Dad about it and he said “No, don’t. Bring a fella”. This was the first time I’d ever heard my Dad use the word “fella”. I’d already invited a friend and to my surprise she said yes. I found out afterwards that my Dad only said no because he feared other people’s reactions, he feared I might get bullied. If he’d told me at the time maybe I wouldn’t have felt so oppressed. We went to the debs anyway, had some nice predrinks with white wine at a friend’s house with some family there. We posed for photos among polite chatter and then went on to the hotel. I was the only girl in my year who brought a girl to the debs. For the most part everything seemed fine until a girl from my year approached me. She pointed to my debs date and said “Who’s she?” My heart started pounding. Even though I’d left secondary school it seemed my fears hadn’t disappeared. I replied “she’s my date”. The girl said “oh” and walked over to my date and said “I really like your dress”.

I just had such fear built up in me because I didn’t know in school that nobody cared. I didn’t know that it made no difference who you were attracted to. If a group like ShoutOut had come into my school and said that it’s ok to be LGBTQ+, just a quiet nodding in response from my class would’ve taken a weight of my shoulders. I would’ve known that everything was fine and would’ve felt uplifted by the workshop that remembered that I exist. This is why I joined ShoutOut. So people like me don’t have to go through secondary school with unnecessary fear that only exists because nobody told them that everything was fine.