What the teachers and youth workers say:

Thank you for the memorable day.  The kids said it was the coolest school trip ever!!  They loved the tour so thanks for organising that for us.  Hopefully St. Michaels will be able to partcipate in the Show Racism the Red Card programme again.

We would like to say a sincere thanks to you and your team for hosting a great event today. Our young people had a great time and are already looking forward to entering compitiions for next year. We are interested in some of the photos also so please let me know the cost. Thanks again for all your hard work and a wonderful day.

Congratulations on a fantastic day.  I was hoping can you let me know who won- the students are eager to hear as they were asking today. Our apologies for not getting to the evntThanks again and we will see you next year.

Thanks so much again for yesterday a day we won’t forget for a long time. Kids are all floating on a high today. We have our local papers coming in to school on Friday coming along with the Lord Mayor of Fingal who will present a certificate of achievement that I printed off from your e mail for each student.

‘We are delighted to be picked for the stadium tour (AVIVA) on the 12th.  I only wish you could have heard the children cheer when I told them’.

I am the third and fourth class teacher in Scoil Mhuire in Glenties. We have recently participated in your project and the children are all a buzz with the videos, discussion topics, drama and questions included in the pack. When I told them we might get an opportunity to tour the Aviva Stadium they went as high as kites.  They have really got their teeth into this project and have put so much effort into the art competition that I would love to be able to reward them with a trip to Dublin. As we are in a small village in Donegal many of the children may never get an opportunity like this again and I would love to take them as a whole class of 24 for the full day outing.

We found the education pack a great resource for introducing the topic of racism. There are 6 young girls in this group comprising of 5 different nationalities, as well as foreign national volunteers and leaders. As you can imagine, I had concerns that the topic could be a sensitive one for young people in the group so the pack was a very useful tool to get started in a light and sensitive manner.

The activities sparked interesting discussion around the topic of racism. Each of the girls gave accounts of their experiences when they moved to Ireland. They felt isolated in the beginning but as time went on and they became better at the English language, they felt things improved. They found the main reason why people judged them was due to ignorance (lack of knowledge or travel experiences). It was like many only saw the Irish way of life and misunderstood foreign nationalities.

They really enjoyed the video.  In a discussion which followed, the girls felt that a lot of it focused on ‘coloured’ people and didn’t represent all the different nationalities that are affected by racism. This gave them inspiration for their entry. As a group, we explored Google images and printed images of 15 different races. The girls then selected an image each, representing all corners of the world. They transferred them onto canvases and added the messages to the top and bottom.

The Wicklow Travellers’ Group Wednesday Drop In Group meet every Wednesday evening in CEART . They are aged between 14 and 18yrs, mainly girls, occasionally a couple of lads show up. The idea of entering the competition was put to the group a while ago. Ten young people watched the DVD and found it very interesting and very well done. The only criticism they had was that the DVD did not highlight the discrimination experienced by the Traveller community on an ongoing basis.