Journalist's first-hand experience on JobPath

PARTING COMPANY WITH TURAS NUA

- "Potentially, I was a poster boy for their endeavours"

BY BEN PANTER

What is it like to spend a year on JobPath? 

We recognise the importance of hearing from people experiencing disadvantage or discrimination.
Many have no doubt found JobPath worked for them, but despite statistics that point to low levels of complaints, the 'labour activation' programme seems to dissatisfy many. 

It has been debated at the highest levels in the Dáil, however nobody in that chamber has the first hand experience that Ben Panter was able to bring to the table. 

- Editor

FULL TEXT OF BEN PANTER'S ARTICLE, as published in the current edition of 'Changing Ireland' (available through Easons):

Jon was ecstatic – The Community Employment (CE) Scheme had offered him a role as a carer, enabling him to achieve his lifelong vocation, after a period of unemployment. Days later his tone had changed.

“Because I am with Turas Nua, I am not allowed to take the job,” he said.

I thought he was joking, but alas no. A place on a CE scheme is not a job.

Superb equality resource idea from Monaghan County Council

Compare how different your life would have been had you lived  in 1955

- Monaghan County Council’s booklet takes an unique approach to demonstrating how people’s struggle for social justice and equality has reaped many rewards. Anyone in Ireland today would find it useful to give them perspective in the struggle for equality.

Click here to download the 2 page spread!

Last year’s marriage referendum shook people involved with Monaghan’s social inclusion efforts. 
The ‘Yes’ side won by the narrowest of margins, less than one percent, in Cavan-Monaghan and according to Bernie Bradley, social inclusion officer with Monaghan County Council, “If we weren’t a joint constituency, it wouldn’t have passed.”
Their response was to produce a beautiful booklet titled ‘A Tale of Two Counties’ which is fast becoming the go-to resource for community workers seeking to educate people about the nine grounds for unlawful discrimination.
Through photographs and personal testimony (three pages of which are reproduced here) the book simultaneously contrasts yet merges the differing fates of youngsters in 1955 and 2015. 
The booklet demonstrates how the fight for equality has changed the lives of so many people. Only Travellers have an even harder time of it now when it comes to discrimination. 
“The results of the referendum show that this initiative is particularly important in Monaghan,” said Bernie.
So striking is the imagery and layout that the hardest cynic could not deny the benefits of the long struggle for a more equal society.
Monaghan’s experience of exclusion in 1955 can be seen as reflective of wider Irish society then. To put it mildly, it wasn’t easy fit in if you were different and there are many people today who can testify to that.
The book was launched last June as part of Social Inclusion Week by, then Minister-of-State, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin.
Elsewhere in the country, it has been greeted as a ground-breaking resource for community workers.
As Bernie puts it, “The truth is, every day in Monaghan, Ireland and the rest of the world people are often treated differently because they are different. But Monaghan Social Inclusion Measures group, led by Monaghan County Council wants everyone to feel it’s okay to be different.”
This isn’t the last you’ll hear from Monaghan regarding the struggle for equality. 

Copies of the booklet are available by contacting the community department of Monaghan County Council on 047-73720. E: gcostello@monaghancoco.ie or bbradley@monaghancoco.ie

- By Allen Meagher & Ben Panter for 'Changing Ireland'.

Get the latest on community development here in Ireland - and abroad

Our latest edition is PACKED with social inclusion and community development news you won't read anywhere else:

LEAD STORY: Early childhood intervention works, according to newly published evidence from Dublin.

MEASURING POVERTY: Ever wondered how poverty is measured and how who gets what? Plenty debate inside the covers here, with Pobal and Truth Haase contributing to a debate begun by Ian Dempsey of West Cork Development Partnership.

FROM BRUSSELS: Ben Panter reports back on how and why we must respond to the humanitarian issue of refugees seeking sanctity. Meanwhile, the EU continues to break international law.

CULTURAL RIGHTS: Ray Lucey went along twice - he volunteered as well as reported - from inside Dublin's only cinema geared specifically towards people who are homeless.

CO-OPS: You'll never bake alone! And how to resurrect clubs that faced the axe. Plus Utopia in Ireland – it’s possible, claims Joe Leddin.

EQUALITY in Monaghan in 1955 is compared to equality today - it seems that only Travellers are worse off than they were six decades ago. Hats off to Monaghan County Council for an utterly unique angle on the struggle for equality.

And HORACE is back, with an answer to the Irish issue of who he should pay for his water!

Experience points to embracing our urban cowboys

- Reframing sulky riding in a positive context

By Allen Meagher

Anyone who’s seen the video of sulky riders taking over both sides of the Cork-Mallow road would be inclined to think sulky racing was a menace.

Indeed, prosecutions did follow, an outcome welcomed as much by community groups as by the general public.

However, the exception does not prove to be the rule and as Chrissie O’Sullivan from the Traveller Visibility Group (TVG) says of the urban horse culture, “media portrayal has not been helpful.”

She argues that, “The issue of horse ownership should never have become a negative issue.”

In 1996, legislation was introduced that made it almost impossible to legally own and ride a horse in an urban area.

The Control of Horses Act has not so much eroded the sub-culture, as driven it underground.

If a stranger were to enquire about who owns any of the dozen or so horses grazing on land across the road from ‘Changing Ireland’s office in Moyross, they’d have to wait until hell freezes over before they get an answer.

The other ‘Big A’ debate - Putting people on horseback first

EDITORIAL

By Allen Meagher, editor 'Changing Ireland'

The public generally understands two things about local authorities. On the one hand, the elected representatives deserve more power - too much rests with officials. The second commonly held view is that local authorities are sometimes responsible for the problems they’re trying to solve.

They struggle to connect with ‘hard-to-reach’ citizens.

Recently, in Moyross, we had 30 balaclava-clad young people riding around on horseback firing stones at public buildings after dozens of horses were taken by the pound on orders from the local authority. More restrained horse-owners protested outside council offices. Neither the crude and dangerous protest nor the dignified one sought jobs or training, just social inclusion and an end to persecution. However, all four could be delivered together if those holding the reins of power put their thinking caps on.

JUST PUBLISHED! 24 spectacular pages of local & community development work from around Ireland

It's out! Packed with news & features, the Winter 2012 edition of 'Changing Ireland' has reached many thousands of readers around the country by post, 

is in Easons and you can flick through as easily as the paper version at http://issuu.com/changingireland/docs/changing_ireland-issue_41__winter_2012

LEAD ST

ORYPoliticans Promise The Sun, Moon & Stars, but Martin delivers!

COLLECTIVE ACTIONOlder People Speaking Out (Limerick)
Tackling the Jobs Crisis (Wexford)
16 Days of Action - What did you do?
Santa joins protests against austerity!

INTERGENERATIONAL WORKMonaghan's Cross-Border initiative
East Wall, Dublin's pride of place win

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENTFocus on Kilkenny 

Cats building cars & finding work

SOCIAL INCLUSIONPreventing Early School Leaving
Duhallow's answer to anti-social behaviour: Boxing
Youths go under the hood
Fun flows for teenage revellers
Anon - How we got the criminals out of our lives

INTERNATIONALImagine if only 36% of your organisation's funding came from Govt!

VOLUNTEERING
West Cork interview
Laois initiative

ALSO
Conference briefs

CHANGING IRELAND ISSUE 41

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The national magazine of the Local and Community Development Programme

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NEW RESOURCE: POBAL MAPS

- Social inclusion mapping now a reality

With the click of a mouse, you can now view levels of deprivation in your area under a range of categories and down to street level.

You don’t hear people saying ‘Thanks to Pobal’ everyday, but that’s where the credit is due and this is a free resource which people will tend to underestimate until they try it out.

The Local & Community Development Programme (LCDP)

The Local & Community Development Programme (LCDP) is managed by POBAL on behalf of the Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs. It forms part of the National Development Plan 2007 -2013.

The Programme is an amalgamation of two former programmes, Local Development Social Inclusion Programme and the Community Development Programme.

AIM: The LCDP aims to tackle poverty and social exclusion through partnership between Government and people in the most disadvantaged communities.

PROGRAMME GOALS: There are four key goals under LCDP.

• GOAL 1: Promote awareness, knowledge and uptake of a wide range of statutory, voluntary and community services;

• GOAL 2: Increase access to formal and informal educational, recreational and cultural activities and resources

• GOAL 3: Increase in people’s work readiness and employment prospects

• GOAL 4: Promote engagement with policy, practice, and decision-making processes on matters affecting local communities

‘Changing Ireland’/www.changingireland.ie is the national magazine for the Programme. It is setting up as an independent company, having for the past 9 years being managed by the voluntary board of management of the CDN Moyross Ltd.

We will shortly be publishing a map showing the distribution of companies nationwide within the Programme.

For more on CDPs and their place within the Programme, check our earlier blog entry.