Learning Community

Despite adversity, the community of Ballymun has survived and thrived in many ways.  Countless families have broken through the barriers of disadvantage and ensured that their children have had positive and fulfilling life choices.  Community organizations have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with families and built structures and services to enable those choices.  Policy makers, voluntary groups, parents,  children and young people have played crucial roles.  In effect Ballymun has ‘learned’ how to overcome adversity.

But many barriers remain.  Because in any community where disadvantage has had time to tighten its grip, the challenge for change continues and the momentum of community ‘ learning’ must build to outpace and uproot disadvantage.  Learning is one of the most dynamic drivers of change.

The Learning Community is the systemic change element of the youngballymun initiative.  youngballymun is one small but significant layer of our local ‘learning community’.  Our strategy can only ‘learn’ further and succeed itself if it is part of a wider learning community.  One important strand of our work is to play a strong role helping to drive that learning community.
Ways in which we do this include:
• Training and capacity building
• Facilitated reflection and analysis of practice
• Evaluation

We create reflective learning spaces for:

• Children, young people, parents, residents
• Staff and facilitators in our Partner Organisations
• Community leaders, local stakeholders, policy makers, funders, service providers and other relevant organizations.

We proactively co-create new ways to impact on cultural change through:

• Thematic events, training, publications, celebrations, creativity and gathering and circulating the stories of change.