Eureka students' national award for loneliness awareness project

Students from Eureka Secondary School, Kells, have won the Garda National Youth Award 2020 for their YSI project 'Never Home Alone'.

Chief Superintendent of the Meath Garda Division, Fergus Healy, was on hand at Eureka to present the trophy award to class representatives, Nora Barry and Emma Gorman.

Teacher Stephen McKee, who oversaw the project said: "We are delighted to have won this award for our school. Loneliness is a major issue in Ireland today, especially so during these challenging times, and there are profound physical and mental health problems that are exacerbated by loneliness. Our students wanted to raise awareness of the negative health implications of loneliness. We wanted to engage people who may be lonely or at risk of being lonely, and encourage them to get active, meet people and get support.

We also wanted to lobby the Government to allocate specific funding for community initiatives to combat loneliness."

The 10-week programme saw Eureka students take part in various activities with older people to help connect the generations and address the issue of loneliness and associated mental health problems in the local community.

"Each week students met with the group of senior citizens and did a range of activities; ranging from us teaching senior citizens how to use the internet; dancing, arts and crafts, music bingo, to the senior citizens teaching us students how to cook!"

Nora Barry, student project manager continued: "We would like to sincerely thank the senior citizens involved and acknowledge the support of our principal, Caroline O’Reilly, Catherine McGuigan of Age Friendly Ireland; Meath County Council; Sergeant Dean Kerins, members of the Meath Older Persons Council, Shane Carolan of Prosper Meath, Aine Brady of Third Age and all our local public representatives."