Public Achievement’s mission is ‘Building Democratic Communities Together’. We work with young people and to support adults to work with young people in ways which encourage active citizenship. Our efforts are focused on working with communities that face tough realities – in particular areas that face social and economic disadvantage and many which have also been adversely affected by the former conflict and its legacy.
We work with young people, and with adults who want to work with young people to make their communities better places to live. We work in a broad range of venues, including community centres, youth clubs, schools and museums (and very soon Fire Stations). We have developed a model we call ‘Civic Youth Work’.
We believe this work is essential if Northern Ireland is to move away from a legacy of violent conflict to becoming a thriving, vibrant, pluralist and more democratic society.
The key adult in our projects is a ‘coach’ – normally a volunteer, who works with the young people to help them to design and implement their project and to make it public. However they do not do the work for the young people. We support and train coaches in our civic youth work model, including through a series of residentials. Our coaches are diverse in terms of age, community background and ethnicity, and their diversity adds to the richness of our projects. For more information on our programmes, visit here.
Public Achievement works in a number of different locations across Northern Ireland, in the border counties of the Irish Republic, and with partners across the world. A site is normally a community facility – school, youth centre, community centre – or a venue such as a museum or fire station. This is where the group of young people meets – normally weekly, and designs and implements their action project.
