A NUMBER of community groups on the Northside have come together to develop a pilot project to deliver a listening service for young people in distress.
The Listen Project is aimed at youngsters aged 12 to 17 years from the Dublin 17 and 13 regions and neighbouring communities.
It provides four free listening sessions to any young person who contacts the freephone number. The sessions are provided by trained counsellors and all issues are acceptable reasons to access the service.
Heidi Bedell, from TARGET, based in Donaghmede, and a member of the steering group for the Listen Project, told Northside People:
“We know that young people can get a great benefit from talking through their problems, often preventing those problems from becoming more serious later on.
“The 12 to 17-year-olds are too old to be treated as children and too young to access the adult counselling services that are available. There’s just very little out there to help them.
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As well as providing a listening service the project hopes to gather information anonymously about the problems facing young people today.
The steering group hopes to use the information to provide more focused and useful services for young people in the future.
Funding for this project is coming from the Dormant Accounts fund which is managed by Pobal, a not-for-profit organisation with charitable status that manages various funding programmes on behalf of the Irish Government and the EU.
The organisations working together on the project include Northside Partnership, Sphere 17, TARGET and the New Life Centre.
Mick Ferron, manager of Sphere 17, said this is a great example of community organisations working together to create something good with minimum funding.
“This is something we are probably going to have to do a lot more of over the next couple of years,
? stated Mr Ferron.
“We’re lucky to have such a vibrant and experienced community sector in North Central and North East Dublin.
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To contact the Listen Project, people can call the freephone number: 1800 303 638.
Meanwhile, a Listen Project Video Clip Competition has been launched in conjunction with the initiative. The prize is
?¬200 and the deadline for entries is June 6.
The organisers are proposing a launch of the Listen Project in Sphere 17 Regional Youth Facility on Friday June 7 at 3pm where the winning video clip will be played and the prize presented.
The purpose of the competition is to generate more awareness and understanding of what the Listen Project is about among young people.