The Global Thread, is a special four part series that will raise public awareness of active citizenship around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.  Produced in partnership with Comhlamh, this series will focus on gender equality and reproductive rights; sustainable energy and extractive industries; deinstitutionalisation of children’s care and economic inequalities.  Each programme features interviews with people at the frontline in fighting for a sustainable future for our planet.

Episode 2: Deinstitutionalisation of Orphanages

Deinstitutionalisation , or DI, is a term that gets used to describe processes organisations plan and take to move away from orphanages and residential care towards community and family based care.  And while this centered the needs of children, it also it about democracy and power. The ability for communities to have that power means being resourced to do that. So whether than here in Ireland or in the global south, part of this is about community development. Yet often community development and international development are seen as separate things. The programme discuss these issues as well as presenting two examples of best practice in Ireland: Chernobyl Children’s International and Hope Foundation.

Interviewees:

1. Mark Brennan, the UNESCO Chair for Rural Community, Leadership, and Youth Development and Professor of Leadership and Community Development at the Pennsylvania State University. Much of his work has focused on community action, youth development, locally based natural resource management, economic development, and social justice. He is co-founder of the Global Network of UNESCO Chairs on Children, Youth, and Community.

1. Professor Patrick Dolan, joint founder and Director of the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre and an Academic Director of the M.A. in Family Support Studies. Professor Pat Dolan holds the prestigious UNESCO Chair in Children, Youth and Civic Engagement, the first to be awarded in the Republic of Ireland. The UNESCO Chair delivers a comprehensive programme of work towards the objective of promoting civic engagement and leadership skills among children and youth.

2. Adi Roche founder and is CEO of Chernobyl Children’s International, an organisation that provides humanitarian aid to the affected children of Ukraine, Belarus and Western Russia who have been involved in processes of DI. Chernobyl Children International had been involved with sending volunteers to orphanages in the area it worked in Ukraine, Belarus and Western Russia. So what kind of settings were orphanages Chernobyl Children International found itself involved in that motivated their desire to move to family and community based care?

3. Padraig Fitzgerald, programme manager with The Hope Foundation who work with a range of projects in Calcutta in India and West Bengal. The Hope Foundation work with a range of young people experiencing extreme poverty and in many cases exploitation. In fact assisting young people being sexually abused and exploitation was how they started up over 20years ago.

Produced by Mark Malone (Comhlamh) and Sally Galiana (Near FM)

Made with the support of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland with the television licence fee.