President Honours Young Social Innovators of the Year 2012
Date: Wed 16th Jan, 2013 | 15:16
The title holders of Young Social Innovators of the Year 2012 from Davis College, Mallow, Co. Cork, were invited this week to Áras an Uachtaráin by President Michael D. Higgins to be personally congratulated by him on their award-winning and outstanding efforts to help the families and communities of missing people in Ireland.
The YSI students, whose project was entitled ‘Forget Me Not’, are delighted at the recent announcement by Minister Alan Shatter that Ireland would be holding its first annual Missing Persons Day in December this year. A spokesperson for the Young Social Innovators team said,
“We are delighted that after two years of campaigning a national day for Missing Persons has been announced. The issue of missing people became very personal to all of the students involved in this campaign. The recent announcement by Minister Shatter gives us great encouragement and we hope that others will be inspired by our project”.
The national ‘Forget Me Not’ campaign was developed through the students’ participation in the YSI Social Innovation Programme and was a continuation of the work begun by the school’s previous Transition Year YSI team, ‘Missing Persons’. It aimed to highlight the plight of the families of missing people, to support organisations that help in searching for missing people, and to introduce an innovative Exit Point Strategy bringing public attention to the issue of missing people through a poster and placement campaign in Irish airports, ports, and ferry terminals.
