Getting back into the swing of things 2021

Traditionally at Solas Project the team get together every August before stepping out of Summer into a new school year. This is a chance to revisit our vision and values together, to remind ourselves and each other the purpose of our work, and why we do what we do. Thanks to the St. Catherine’s Church for giving us use of their space allowing us to all be together face to face safely with social distance!

This year we took some time to reflect on a crazy year and half of Covid19 and the implications the pandemic had on our work with young people. We were able to pull some useful learning from the changes that we made in order to keep everyone safe, such as increased working from home where possible and spreading staff out over our different locations.

August 2021 team week was also an unusual one and shortened as we were grieving the sudden death of a young person very dear to us. At this extremely hard time, the team were also kept busy facilitating a space in for young people to gather and share stories about this young man the whole community knew and loved.

The week culminated with a team day out kayaking at Avon Ri in Blessington served as therapeutic for some of us. Surrounded by mountains and the lake, we paired up to do a little tour of the lake on our kayaks including a refreshing dip in the lake, very much welcomed by us all on a sunny balmy day. We would highly recommend Avon Ri with its stunning scenery, excellent staff and great food options. It was a lovely way to unwind and spend some time outside of our normal inner city setting.

This face to face time as a team and particularly our trip out was a unique opportunity to get to know each other outside of the work context particularly after a year and half where social activities were not an option. It was also the first time some of our newer staff had met the team in person.

As is always the case, this was a small pause between summer programmes ending and yearly programmes firing on ahead. A few days later we welcomed our new European Solidarity Corps (ESC) volunteers for 2021-2022…more to come on that…we’ll introduce them soon!

We are currently recruiting some new members of the team for a new programme and look forward to welcoming them to the Solas Project family.  For the upcoming year we’re hoping we can have more time together as team like this, through the hard times and celebrations alike.

Let's get our creative juices flowing

Our young people have been getting creative coming into Summer.

Art is a form of therapy. With our tweens and teens we love to get creative and encourage the young people to process their thoughts and feelings, subconscious or other through this medium.

Step Up has been running activities over the summer including some smaller group art sessions. We wanted to show case some of the young people’s wonderful artistic works on here.

The Coombe makes for a great bright location to facilitate these activities and we plan to keep those creative juices flowing!

What’s for Dinner?

Four days a week 35 children and young people attending our After Schools Programme can avail of a hot meal freshly prepared each day by our European Solidarity Corps Volunteers.

From spaghetti bolognese as a regular reliable to fish fingers and mash every Wednesday, daily meals create a welcome routine for children and young people, and go a long way to create the safe space we strive for. The children and young people also enjoy getting involved in food preparation and baking. As with everything we seek and welcome their input.

To help us keep costs to a minimum for daily meals Solas Project is delighted to avail of free dried and tinned food made available under the FEAD Programme.

What is FEAD?

The Fund of European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) is designed to support European Member States in addressing the basic needs of the people in our community.  The Programme works through not-for-profit bodies to fund the purchase of food and basic material assistance. The distribution of this Fund in Ireland is known as FEAD Ireland.

Where Does the Food Come From?

FoodCloud (an award winning Social Enterprise ) are the national delivery partner for the (FEAD) programme nationwide. FoodCloud's role is to procure, store and distribute FEAD products to eligible charities, which supports individuals to take their first steps out of poverty and social exclusion.

Every month Michelle, our finance and administration manager collects the products at Food Cloud’s depot in Broomhill Road, Tallaght for use in the kitchen we use at Saint Catherines Church, Thomas Street.

Over the years our International students including ESC volunteers have been introduced to coddle and stew, they in turn have attempted to sprinkle some of their own flavours and twists to our menu giving children and young people in Dublin 8 some more eclectic tastes!

Keeping Active – school sports, zoom classes & sea swims

The Solas@School team were delighted to get back into schools this term for Solas Sports. The weather has been good to us and it's been great to have some fun in person (sweating underneath our masks!). A few of our volunteers and students have had the opportunity to join us too.

We’ve also continued doing regular Sports activities with the After Schools clubs. These activities shifted from indoors to outdoors permanently the last year. The children look forward to Thursdays for Sports with Ste in Phoenix park.

We are committed to fulfilling one of our five objectives for The Club which is provision of regular physical activities to support the children’s physical and mental wellbeing helping them stay Active and Healthy.

This year The Clubs have had fewer demands on the homework front and with an incentive to get outdoors as much as possible to keep everyone safe from Covid19 we’ve been more active than ever.

The young people involved in our Justice programmes have also been keeping fit at online fitness classes with coach Eanna, one on one runs with key workers and some have even been brave enough to tag on the pandemic craze of jumping in the Irish sea!

From July we’re hoping to run fitness sessions as part of a set of workshops planned for Oberstown Children Detention Campus.

And it’s not just the young people, our staff team dusted off those winter cobwebs by taking on a walking / running challenge for the month of March.

Family, friends and dogs tagged along as we ran, walked and cycled through hail, rain and sunshine. Our top walker covered an impressive 395km. As a team we walked the distance from Dublin to Moscow!

Shiny new Shopfronts

Thanks to our new shopfronts our spaces are becoming increasingly more visible in the heart of the Liberties community.

We have a brand new sign up at The Yard shop and workshop (at 82 The Coombe), we hope to have a windowfront display of our handmade products soon!

Two doors down at The Bridge (80 The Coombe) we have bright new window signage which provides privacy for our young people while still allowing lots of light into the space.

We are also excited to have new shutters on the way for The Bridge.

A big thank you to our friends at Dublin City Council who have supported these improvements through the shopfront improvement scheme and the Community Enhancement Grant.