33 Educators providing Leadership courses in Dundonald

politics in action

We are delighted to welcome our new Executive Director Paul Smyth, who comes to us with a wealth of experience and a strong reputation for ground breaking youth work. I am thrilled to have taken up the post of Executive Director with Politics in Action – and I want to start by congratulating my predecessor Patricia O’Lynn on her election to the Northern Ireland Assembly. We live in a turbulent time for politics around the world, nationally and locally – and this makes the work of supporting young people’s role as active citizens more challenging and even more important. We are emerging from a global pandemic which has put unprecedented restrictions on the lives and freedoms of young people, and which has impacted their learning, their social lives, their relationships and for some their mental health. Politics in Action responded proactively to these challenges by moving workshops online and ensuring continuity. I am optimisticwe can return to largely face-to-face delivery of our programmes with young people in schools and other settings, and can find new ways of engaging with more young people and in particular those who are not normally invited into conversations about politics and citizenship. Much of what we already do is in collaboration with schools and with other youth organisations. I see so much potential for additional collaborations that allow our little charity to punch above its weight. One of the many attractions of the role is the excellent Board of Trustees who provide strong governance, leadership and vision for Politics in Action. They bring significant social and political capital to the charity and use it in the interests of young people and our shared future. I would love to hear your ideas about how Politics in Action should direct our energies over the coming months and years. Feel free to drop me a line and I am always up for a coffee and a creative chat!

generation women

I spent the first half of my career in a thick fog, and of course I got lost and ended up somewhere I didn’t want to be. I felt lost, miserable, and what little confidence I had was waning by the minute. I also became a total bore. I was consumed by how unhappy I was. I couldn’t even apply for another job because I didn’t know what I’d do. So I felt stuck. I had, by many measures, a great job, a great salary, in a great company. But I was in the wrong place. I was ambitious with nowhere to direct it, so it evolved into frustration! It took a fair bit of effort to turn it around, which started with working out what I wanted and developing some much needed confidence to get there. Thankfully I had a good basis with my Psychology degree, throw in a mountain of self-help books, a coaching and NLP qualification, a mountain of training on presenting and the like…and a real desire to build my brand, visbility, and expertise, meant I built a reputation for business and leadership transformation. That experience of having a big impact, being recognised, and having real influence made me feel like I could achieve anything. My values, purpose, and strengths were all aligned and I felt amazing! It came as quite a shock then to be confronted by my inner feminist one day. I’d had my first daughter (I now have 2), and was having a cheeky nap. You know how it is, I love my sleep! So for the first time ever, I sat her down in front of Nickelodeon so I could get some zzz’s. I was happily snoozing away when the advertising started to filter through to me. The ‘boys toys’ were all exciting and adventurous. The ‘girls toys’ made me want to vomit. All about being pretty and vacuous. I jumped off the sofa with an ‘oh hell no’! Ever since I was a little girl I’ve been driven by fairness. I think it may be because I’m the youngest of 4 and nothing ever seemed fair from my standpoint. My sister tells me of times I used to fight for gay rights at the dinner table and I was always arguing for what I felt was right (because it is). The one thing I’d never have called myself back then, or until that day, was a feminist. No, I’d been well trained by society to see feminists as embarrassing, hairy, dungaree-wearing angry women who made a show of themselves. This moment set a chain of events into action that lead me to start a political party where I live, and gave me the direction for the business I would later start.

queen's university belfast