Sustainable Sleepover Club

EP 39 With Taylor on Youth-work Development 

Maha is a 16 year old teenage girl from Limerick who originally came from Pakistan and has been living in Ireland for the past 7 year. She describes herself as a student life content creator and likes to share her notes, study motivation, tips n tricks and her journey as a student. Go follow @digitaldiaryofms on Instagram!

On top of that, she has a passion for student voice, slow fashion, and religious freedom. Maya has been an active member of the green schools committee in her school since 1st year. Previously, taking part in competitions like young reporters of the environment, Young environmentalist Awards and Junkkouture. She is currently serving her term as the limerick regional officer in the Irish Second level students union (ISSU).

We loved finding out her study advice, how she became interested in slow fashion and her story of being denied religious freedom and expression. We learned so much from Maya and left the conversation filled with inspiration and motivation. In the sleepover section, our students who finished the Leaving Cert this summer also share their study advice so this is THE back to school podcast to listen to!

Jamie is a sustainability youth activist from County Monaghan and this episode is all about the Sustainable Development Goals, the framework that gave us the idea to start this podcast in the first place!

He has recently taken his activism even further and is the newly-elected Sustainability Officer of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union (ISSU). As an activist, his main priorities surround Education on Sustainable Development (ESD). He has worked with many organisations to push for quality ESD such as in scout troops across the country with Scouting Ireland or classrooms with the ISSU. His major focus for the year ahead is transport, and working with the government to change the cost of public transport for young people.

We spoke about how Jamie became an activist, the importance of ALL the SDGs and about how critical education is to achieve each and every goal from climate action to gender equality!

We hope you enjoy & learn as always.

In this episode we chat to Ross Boyd who spoke to us about being autistic and asexual. We chat about the problems with the current education system, including his experiences and also the possible solutions to making education more accessible to neurodivergent students.

We hope you enjoy & as always, learn with us!

In this Episode we talk about books and our suggestions and have a go at some unpopular opinions, from leaving cert, to movies, actors and more.

We recorded this episode during Pride Month which is held in June each year to commemorate the Stonewall riots of 1969 and were delighted to chat to the incredibly talented, insightful…Bee. Bee is a  queer illustrator and interdisciplinary creative currently based in London, Bee (aka @beeIllustrates on Instagram) uses their platform to share distinctive, quirky illustrations paired with short essays to educate, empower and inform on a range of important topics. Primarily focusing on mental health, Queerness, Feminism and current affairs, Bee's aim is to make complex theory and difficult subjects accessible and palatable for the modern millennial and Gen-Z audience. Bee graduated from The University of Edinburgh with a First Class Ba (Hons) in Illustration, having also completed courses in Queer Studies and Social Anthropology. We learned so much about both queerness and mental health from talking to them and we love this episode!

Prachi is a 16 year old activist and student involved with Friday's for Future, Comhairle Na nÓg, Young amnesty international, amongst many other activist organisations.

In this episode we spoke to Sophie-Alicia Wiseman who is an brilliant violinist and is deaf.

I spoke to Honey Ross in this episode who uses she/her pronouns, is bisexual, is a writer and She co-founded The Pink Protest which is a community of activists committed to engaging in action and supporting each other having been a part of changing two UK laws through engaging the power of young people. Honey also co-hosts the incredible Body protest Podcast with Nadia Craddock, a body image researcher. A podcast hoping to unify people with the common understanding that the struggle to love oneself, is very real whilst exploring themes of race, toxic masculinity, eating disorders and general pressures put on us by the media and how these factors altered the journeys of individual guests. They combine science and storytelling to talk about body image. She has also shared her body positivity on instagram and has also done just really cool things like been on Celebrity GoogleBox and got to go to Adele’s comeback show! If you haven’t heard of her work, you might know her as Jonathan Ross’ daughter.

She told us about all these different experiences and we were so grateful for her insight, which we hope is also valuable to anyone listening!

This is our 30th episode and Amy interviewed Jessica Dunne who is an activist with Fridays for Future, an Irish Second-level Students’ Union (ISSU) Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Regional Officer, the Irish delegate for Mock COP26 and TEDx speaker. She is a strong advocate for intersectionality within feminism and the climate movement whose image is part of the Herstory Light Show around Dublin and Kildare to celebrate St. Brigid's Day!

In the sleepover section, we caught up on each of our Midterms. We learned a lot from Jessica and particularly spoke about the progress towards equality and the inequalities that still exist for the LGBTQIA+ community, especially with Pride around the corner. We discussed how we try to make sure our actions are meaningful rather than performative. We hope you listen, learn and laugh with us!!