Fighting Words
The Club were interested to hear about Fighting Words from Speaker Dublin North Club Past President Pat Larragy Monday 08 May. He pointed out that Fighting Words (FW) is a Charity, founded 8/9 years ago in Dublin by teacher and author PHF Roddy Doyle and former director of Amnesty Ireland PHF Sean Love.
It provides free tutoring in creative writing, in highly effective ways, to 10,000 children/young adults in Ireland every year (the target for 2020 is 20,000). Their activities are operated out of six centres: Dublin (opposite Croke Park), Belfast (in Skainos, East Belfast, as well as the Duncairn Centre for Culture and Arts in North Belfast), Castlebar, Galway and Wicklow. To date, the Charity has been funded by private funds. The demand from primary and secondary schools is running currently at several times capacity and there is a strong demand for more premises at home and abroad though they have decided to concentrate on the island of Ireland.
| He highlighted a recent OECD survey of Irish literacy (reported by the Irish Times) which shows Ireland & England students at university level to be among the poorer performers amongst the 24 countries surveyed. Fighting Words believe creative writing is an essential part of every child's education and that the formal education system is not adequately providing this opportunity for children. He stressed that Fighting Words is filling that gap and further information can be found on their website (here) and played the video right showcasing Fighting Words Belfast. |
He advised that the Rotary goal is to set up 2 new centres on a free leasehold basis before the end of 2017/18.