Democracy in Action

Pupils' Council representatives for the coming year were elected last month. Each form elects a boy and a girl and the successful TY candidates were Molly Dunne and Ugo Onwurah. Both of them also represented the college recently on the Dublin South Comhairle na nOg and Molly writes below about their brush with representative democracy. 


On Wednesday October 26th Ugo Onwurah and I represented St. Columba’s in the South Dublin Comhairle na nOg. Comhairle na nÓg are local youth councils, which give children and young people the opportunity to be involved in the development of local services and policies. We signed ourselves in and mingled with pupils from various schools while we waited for the others to arrive. At 10 am we had a short introduction to the work of the council and then we listened to a speech on mental health and the importance of staying positive and having hope and belief in ourselves.

We were then all separated into groups. In our groups we discussed topics such as teenage drinking, drug use, tobacco, mental health and a variety of other important issues along those lines. All of our information was taken down by a member of the comhairle and it was good to have our opinions and views appreciated. It wasn’t all work though! We played a game of human bingo (to be honest I didn’t know what to expect!) and also another game which involved tying balloons to our ankles and the running around the conference room trying to step on and break other people's balloons! Overall I found the experience very enjoyable and worthwhile, we met a lot of interesting people and as I said before it was really great to have our opinions heard and taken into consideration.