Amnesty Workshop

Every year Amnesty International Ireland hosts a TY work experience programme, traditionally in the office where students join the team for week blocks, and more recently for a virtual TY experience. Young people apply in September and October each year for the academic year ahead.

Participants gain knowledge about human rights and our campaigns, and have the opportunity to engage with Amnesty staff, guest speakers and human rights activists. Participants also work together to act for human rights change, gain activism and campaigning skills, and insight into the impact of their actions.

The following is a Reflection by Transition Year student , Sinead O Mahony, who participated in this year’s online workshop between Monday , January 24th to Thursday, January, 27th.

On Monday, we got to know everyone else who was doing the amnesty international course. Everyone else was from Leinster except for me! Something I thought was interesting about the people doing the course was that we were all women even though it was open to any TY students. Today, we learnt about Amnesty's work and human rights in general. We also learnt about different types of activism. 

On Tuesday, we learnt about direct provision. There was a guest speaker, Abdulai Mansaray who had been through the direct provision system. He was originally from west Africa but had to leave because he was campaigning for human rights in his country. He said that he hadn't even heard of Ireland before and was just shipped off over here when he was looking for help to leave. He talked about how dehumanizing the whole experience was in direct provision.He was actually kicked out of his center because he was attending an English class and so he missed his curfew. Even though he had been through so much, he was really upbeat and funny. He was a really good speaker and it was so easy to listen to him.

On Wednesday we learnt about Israel and Palestine. There were speakers from both Israel and Palestine talking about the situation there. In the afternoon, we split up into breakout rooms and discussed an issue we would like to target in Ireland. We decided to reduce Islamophobia in Ireland. One of the girls that was in the group is muslim and she was talking abou all the bullying she got for wearing her hijab for going to pray in her local mosque. It was nice to actually get to talk to people instead of just listening to someone talk.

On Thursday we continued with our activity from Friday afternoon. We talked about how we could make what we wanted to happen actually happen. The people who were running the week then were trying to convince us to set up an amnesty international school group and to join their youth membership.

Overall I really enjoyed the week and I’d definitely recommend it to someone future Transition Year students.

Thank you

Sinead O Mahony 4.4.