News
Comhairle na nÓg
by Youth Correspondent Kaila Dunne
Mental health and Coping Skills for teenagers were the themes for this years Limerick City Comhairle na nÓg Annual General meeting attended by schools from all over the city. Comhairle na nÓg is an organization, which allows young people, to express their views and opinions on relevant issues that affect them today in society. One young person described it as ‘’a place where you don’t have to hide yourself because nobody will judge you’’ The main objectives of the day was too encourage new members to join the Comhairle, to give young people a platform to voice their opinions on positive mental health and to create key recommendations and coping strategies too share with each other to help one another.
The AGM was held in The Factory the wonderful youth space on the Southside. The setting is youth friendly and it created a comfortable atmosphere for the young students to work in. The day was split up into several parts, In the morning everybody had the opportunity too get too know each other through ice breakers followed by a group discussion on what positive mental health is. The next topic tackled was ‘How Do Young People Cope?’’ in this session the young people spoke about stressful situations in their lives and then offered and shared solutions with each other on how too cope with them. The members of the current Comhairle created a slogan to best sum up a message they found would stay with the other young people and remind them of what they learned at the AGM. ‘Motivation is a key skill, be resilient and rise above’. Each group had to design a separate word of the sentence not knowing what it would be and at the end of the day each young person worked as a unit to put the phrase together in the correct order.
Great entertainment was provided by the Choke Comedy group, which helped end the day on a positive lighthearted note.
Watch a video about ‘Bullying’ the topic of last years AGM: