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.

 
Specific Learning Community Actions in the period January – June 2009 included:

• Contracting with CAN to facilitate and support reflective practice across youngballymun.
• Completing design and the delivery of a six module multi-agency youth mental health training programme with over forty participants in partnership with Headstrong, the National Centre for Youth Mental Health.
• Inviting Dr. Tim Shanahan, international literacy expert to Ballymun to conduct workshops in schools on aspects of his literacy framework and to address educators across the island of Ireland at a public event entitled “Breakthrough Thinking of Literacy Learning.
• Celebrating the completion of the Incredible Years Parenting Programme with more than twenty parents and their friends together with our partners in CAFTA, Holy Spirit Boys National School, Virgin Mary Girls and Boys National Schools and St. Joseph’s Junior School in Ballymun.
• Marking the commencement by the HSE, Public Health Nurse Team in Ballymun a fifteen day training in the Parent and Child Psychological Support Programme model of work with the programme developer Professor Angeles Cerezo of the University of Valencia, Spain.

Specific Learning Community Actions in the period June to December 2009 included:

• Highscope service design completed and Highscope training programme commenced in partnership with Barnardos
• Participation in Headstrong’s national ‘Jigsaw’ network
• Appointment of a consortia comprising NUIM, DCU, QUB and the University of Lancaster led by Principal Investigator, Dr. Sinead Mc Gilloway, NUIM to conduct the independent process evaluation of youngballymun
• Conversations for parents and teachers with Caroline Webster- Stratton, the developer of the Incredible Years programme and the launch of our Incredible Years service
• ‘It’s Good To Talk’ – the youngballymun October mental health and wellbeing awareness week offered a choice of twenty mental health and wellbeing activities across the life cycle in partnership with a host of projects and organisations in Ballymun
• Oral Language Development research in partnership with primary schools in Ballymun and Trinity College, Dublin (ongoing)
• The participation by the Write-Minded team Martina Gannon and Duana Quigley in the first part of training in the Australian research-based resource First Steps Speaking and Listening which is a programme recognised by the Department of Education and Science to specifically target the development of oral language skills in classroom settings (the second part of the training will be completed in January ’10); on completion of the training the Write-Minded team will be accredited First Steps tutors able to deliver First Steps programmes to teachers and school staff
• Celebrating with thirty families and our colleagues in CAFTA, Holy Spirit Boys, Virgin Mary Girls and Boys and St. Joseph’s Junior primary schools the completion of a further three Incredible Years parent programmes
• Completion by Breege Breheny our Incredible Years schools coordinator, Miriam Nolan, resource teacher St. Joseph’s Junior and Hazel Walsh, Ballymun Education Support Team of the IY Teacher Classroom Management training for trainers programme in conjunction with the University of Bangor, Wales
• 3,4,5 Learning Years delivers Hanen ‘It’s Good To Talk’ training to a group of childminders from the Ballymun area
• Our first annual conference ‘A Child Is Born’ in December 09 on the theme of infant and parental wellbeing and mental health with keynote address by President Mary McAleese
• The youngballymun Infant Mental Health Masterclasses with Catherine Maguire and Rochelle Matacz (HSE, Cork): Developing Reflection in Infant Mental Health Practice;  Dr. Stuart Shanker (University of York, Canada):  The Science of Early Brain Development and Professor Angeles Cerezo (University of Valencia, Spain): Child socio-emotional development- Child attachment.