A huge congratulations to the young people of the Foróige BEY project, Ballyhaunis, Ireland and Thamarai, Tamil Nadu, India who were awarded a 2025 Youth Excellence Award for the publication of the International Storybook. This is a prestigious award given during the #ETBWeek 2025 Excellence Awards. The ETBI is the Educational and Training Board based in Ireland.
The Youth Excellence Award is in recognition of the hard work, dedication, and growth of 22 Irish and Indian young people coming together to create meaningful cross cultural stories using the power of storytelling, collaboration and digital tools. The International Story Book is available at this link and to view the virtual gallery created with the stories, art work and films from the students, click this link.
“We hope you enjoy reading our stories”! The BEY and Thamarai youth.
Foróige, Ireland is a youth led organisation focusing on developing young people. Their philosophy is rooted in the belief that every young person has something important to contribute to making the world a better place as Thamarai stands for equity and the full potential of all, we have much to co-create together. An alliance was forged with Thamarai in January 2025 and we are very proud to report that Foróige now has its first youth club in Asia at Thamarai.
A young Irish man/ Foroige youth worker, Brian O Neill travelled to Tamil Nadu in January 2024 to strengthen this collaboration and offered the Foróige’ Leadership for Life’ programme to the students at Thamarai.
The Leadership for Life programme is an exciting programme that enables young people aged 15-18 to develop the skills and qualities necessary to be inspiring leaders. Young people are empowered to make a positive change in their community through practical actions and projects. Module 1 of Leadership for Life was completed by 11 Indian students and there are plans over the next 2 years to complete module 2 & 3 which would then give the Indian students a certificate from the University of Galway and Queen’s University Belfast. This training builds on the existing work that Thamarai are doing through the Radical Transformational Leadership program for young people and adults in Tamil nadu and a RTL leadership program held in ATU Castlebar in 2023 by RTL creator Dr. Monica Sharma.
During the recent Leadership for Life programme, Thamarai students created their own inspired definition of leadership ” Leadership is the organising, guiding, and inspiring of people to do what is right and achieve equality in the world”. “I learned how to express my ideas clearly with good communication skills” “I can learn how to become a leader in my community”.
Collaboration in education is not just about shared resources. It is about shared goals, trust, and the ability to bring different perspectives together to create something stronger.