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#citizenshipchallenge

Foróige Youth Citizenship Awards in Partnership with Aldi Ireland

Foróige Youth Citizenship Awards in partnership with Aldi Ireland, 2015

Blog Guidelines

As a young citizen of this planet you can make a real difference to the world around you by using your skills and idealism to make it a better place.The Foróige Youth Citizenship Awards in partnership with Aldi Ireland recognises young people who have been actively involved in their communities or tried to improve the world in some way. The Awards celebrate the positive impact young peole have on the quality of life and wellbeing of others.

If you are taking the citizenship challenge, having a blog is where you tell the world about it, what you did and how you have made a difference . If you haven’t done so yet, start looking at the needs of your community or a world issue you want to address and submit a series of blogs as your project progress. If you are still working on the project, submit blogs as you go along. If you have completed your project, just submit the blogs about the different elements of the your projects. Adult volunteers, mentors or staff can support you in your project – but not do it for you – this is your chance to shine.

Projects should be submitted through a Tumblr Blog. Share your citizenship project through a series of Tumblr blog posts which can include text, images or videos. Use your talents, creativity and initiative. Remember to share your blog with us to be judged!

The Foróige Youth Citizenship Awards in partnership with Aldi Ireland Showcase will celebrate the work of your project. The Showcase will take place on Saturday 24th October in the RDS, Dublin. Details about this exciting Showcase will follow at a later stage!

Creating a Tumblr Blog Creating a Tumblr Blog is fun and easy and it’s FREE. This is the perfect way to show others the fantastic work that you have created or just to talk about the work you will be doing. Creating an account is easy. Follow the next few steps and you will be up and running with a Tumblr Blog in no time at all.

Step 1– Go to https://www.tumblr.com and click on the Sign Up button

Step 2 – Fill in your details (email, password and username) and click sign up again. You may need to try a few passwords (max of 8 characters) before being accepted. You’re almost there!

Step 3 – Enter your age and tick the box to accept the terms and conditions, then click on done.

Step 4 – You will be asked to follow five blogs. If you are not familiar with Tumblr, it is good to follow a few blogs so you see how others do them. If you type“foroige” into the search box on the top right of the screen you will get several other Foroige linked blogs that are good to look at or follow. You can also learn more about Tumblr on their help page.

Step 5 – Adding a Picture

To add a picture, click on the pyramid shaped “Avator” and upload a picture of the club or project group. For privacy and security reasons, blogs by a single individual shoud not include a face picture here, use an image of your area or something to do with the theme of the project instead. Should groups or clubs prefer to use an image of your area or town – that is okay too.



Step 6 – The project title

Click on the “Title” and give it a name. It can have a maximum of 50 characters. All titles must start with “foroigealdi2015” and include the category you are entering e.g. So your project can be “foroigealdi2015thesmurfs” for a club or project entry or “foroigealdii2015jamesmurphy for an individual entry.

Note: Password Protected Blog

You may be asked to give your blog a password so that only those with that password can see it. You should skip this.

Step 7 -‐ Your Details: Email [email protected] with your details. We need to know;

Name of your blog so we can follow you

Name of Club, group or individual

Number of people involved

Lead volunteer/staff

Contact number

Address for correspondence

Which of the following you are-‐you can pick only one;

Foróige club/café/youth club/interest club for 12 to 18 year olds

Foróige Juniors/Club for maily under 12’s

A Foróige project group

A jounior individual entrant ages 12 or under

An individual entrant aged 13 or more

Another group such as Comhairle na nÓg, uniformed group etc.

Name and contact details of the adult/volunteer /staff person who completes blog 4.

Can you let us know if :

we can send you text message reminders?

you would like to attend the awards event and have your project judged as part of the awards or if you would just like to attend the awards event?



Step 8 – Now you are ready to post!

You should see a blue pencil symbol on the top right of the screen once you are in your blog. When you click this, a line of symbols will open on your screen with options such as text, image, video, chat, quotation etc. Click on the one you want to add . The click ‘post’ and it will be added to your blog.

Made a Mistake: By clicking on the wheel at the bottom of the blog, you can edit or delete the post.

What should be included in your Blog-‐ You can use videos, phots and text in your blog but you must answer the questions under each of the headings. The Citizenship Blog gives you the opportunity to describe what you did, how and why you did it and what you learned from the whole experience. Please complete it in your own words and style. Read the questions carefully and answer clearly – give as much detail as you can. Show the judges how great your project is and how others benefited from it

Blog 1: Awareness -‐ is to be filled out by the young people.

Blog 2: Action -‐ is to be filled out by the young people.

Blog 3: Evaluation -‐ is to be filled out by the young people.

Blog 4: Adult Perception -‐ is to be filled out by an adult/volunteer/staff member.

This doucment outlines the questions that should be answered in your blog. It also give you helpful tips. Please read everything carfully to make sure you include everything you need to in your blog!!!



Blog 1 Awareness:

Awareness is about developing your understanding: -‐ understanding of others in society; understanding of your community, its needs/issues/resources/people.

Please include the title Awareness Section for the your blog(s)

Important in writing up this section

Ideally young people would look at the needs of their community but sometimes you do a project because someone suggested it to you. That is OK, but you should note what research you did to find out more about the situation or to undertand the problem. However, higher marks may be given to projects who carry out awareness first.

Read all questions in this section so you know what to include in your blog entry. You can answer the questions in text or video format.

Question 1. How did you find out what improvements were needed in your community? (Walkabout, questionnaires, someone came and told us about the needs e.g. you were approached by a member of the community and asked to fundraise for a particular charity etc)

If someone told you about the improvements needed in your community, ANSWER QUESTION 1 AND THEN SKIP TO QUESTION 4

Question 2. On researching your community, what needs did you discover?

Question 3. Which of the above listed did you decide to do something about?

Question 4. What were your reasons for choosing this need?

Question 5. Did you carry out any further research into the matter before deciding HOW to address it? If so, what did you do and how?



Blog 2 Action: In order to bring about change you need to organise and carry out good action. This action also needs to be

based on a good understanding of what is needed. Please include the title Action Section for the your blog(s)

Important in writing this section:

The more detail you can put in the better: Names dates, numbers of people involved in tasks, how decisions were made, what happened first. How did you let the community know about your project e.g. social media, local newspaper, radio, newsletter? Tell us all.


Question 6. What did you do? List each of the steps taken.

Question 7. In a group project, how was each young person involved? Specify who did what.

Question 8. Is there anything else you want to say briefly about the “Action” part of your project?

Blog 3 Evaluation:

Action on its own is not enough. You need to think about what you are doing and reflect on it. In this way you learn from experience and increase your understanding. Please include the title Action Section for the your blog(s)

Important in writing this section

In this section you should describe how you reflected on and discussed your project, what worked, what didn’t work and what you learned. Outline how you evaluated your youth citizenship project and what results came from that.


Question 9. How did you evaluate the project?

Question 10. What did you learn from participating in your project-‐ about yourself, the community, research, other people etc?

Question 11. If you were to do this project again, would you do anything differently? List any challenges you encountered.



Question 12. Who benifited from your project and how did they benefit? Give details of any evidence to support this.

Question 13. Do you have any plans to continue this project or have you plans to do anything else?

Blog 4: For the Adult Volunteer/Leader or Staff person to Complete

This section of the blog is for the Adult volunteer/leader or staff person to give their perspective on the citizenship project. They should refer to how the group or individual participated, learned and made a difference to others. They should ouline how the community or organisation benefited or reacted to the

project and explain how they feel the overall project went.

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