Raising awareness about mental health through Young Social Innovators

Our Young Social Innovators project is called ‘Cheer Up Buttercup’ and we’re focusing on mental health. We are from St Conleth’s Community College, Newbridge and there are seven members in our YSI group. We chose mental health as our social issue to focus on because it’s an important topic to raise awareness about. We want to uplift and inspire people with mental health issues. We also want to change the way people with mental health issues are perceived in our society and ultimately put a smile on people’s faces.

Our slogan is “There are better days ahead”. At the start of this project we decided to work side by side with one mental health related charity. We chose our local mental health charity ‘Hope D’ and they’ve been an outstanding help throughout our YSI journey.

Since October 2018 we have completed numerous actions such as bake sales, mental health related poster competitions, random acts of kindness, giveaways and we raffled off hampers. The aim of all of these activities was to raise awareness about mental health issues, open up a conversation about mental health and to raise money for our local mental health charity Hope D. We also helped our fellow LGBT YSI group with their funday which was a huge success.

We are currently working on our big action as part of our Young Social Innovators project. We are releasing a mental health EP with songs and poems we wrote, composed and performed ourselves. We want our music to uplift and inspire people across the country and to put a smile on their faces. Our music will be available on iTunes and Spotify soon which is really exciting for us!!

On Sunday the 24th of March we got the opportunity to record with Leo Logan from The Vibes Band. We travelled all the way to Leitrim and it was the best day ever and such an amazing experience. On the 12th of February 2019 we were privileged to go to the YSI Den in DCU Alpha, Glasnevin. It was an amazing experience and we were awarded €500 to make our EP possible. We were also featured on the #TellyourTD video which was amazing.

On Monday the 25th of March we performed at the YSI SpeakOut Tour 2019, It was so much fun and all our hard work definitely paid off. We got an award for most artistic expression which we are over the moon with.

As amazing as all the above sounds it wasn’t all smooth sailing. We sacrificed a lot, argued a lot and worked really hard throughout the project. In the end it paid off though ! We would like to make a special mention to Terri Thorpe, Leo Logan, Michael Banahan, Daire Finney, Jennifer Finney and our YSI guide Donnacha Kelleher. A huge thank you also to all the teachers who supported us, listened to our pitches, watched us practice, supported our actions and helped us better ourselves. Thank you guys for all the time you invested in us. We appreciate it more than you know and we are forever grateful. Taking part in the YSI project his year has been a really great experience for us all and we cannot wait to see what the future holds for Cheer Up Buttercup!!

You can follow us on social media to keep up with the project:

Instagram : @buttercup.cheerup

Twitter: @ysisent

Facebook: Cheer Up Buttercup