IDEA Members Summer Knowledge Share Session Catch-Up

Catch-up on a Summer of Learning!

It's never to late to catch up on our 2025  Knowledge Share   summer series.


This summer we featured some great sessions hosted by our members on topics including hate speech and anti-migrant rhetoric, ending orphanage volunteering and hearing the unheard voices of migrant women in emergency accommodation in Ireland. Catch-up here anytime.


Just Care: Just Volunteering was a session about a new youth resource from Tearfund, to highlight the damage of orphanage volunteering. The session is valuable for youth workers or teachers who want to explore the issues around orphanage volunteering with young people.


The Integrate GCE resource toolkit  is a valuable resource for anyone interested in addressing hate speech and anti-migrant rhetoric. Fiona Duignan, Meath Partnership shared the toolkit which has been designed for educators, youth workers, youth, migrants, community and voluntary workers. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in addressing hate speech and anti-migrant rhetoric.

 

A Partnership with Africa, was an interesting session for post primary educators or GCE professionals to learn about other initiatives in the sector among their peers.


Amplifying Unheard Voices was an important session for GCE practitioners to understand more about the experiences of migrant women living in emergency accommodation centres in Ireland. It was led by Euphomia Edward, AkiDwa.

 

Community Connections  is an opportunity to learn about a new pilot project in the sector  to integrate GCE into Habitat for Humaity’s social enterprise, Habitat ReStore.


Lizzy Noone, outlined why Pleasure Activism, is an important tool for GCE practitioners  when activism seems increasingly demanding and draining. The Cork project, from Creativity and Change in MTU, was partly inspired by the book 'Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good' by Adrienne Maree Brown, exploring various barriers that people face in accessing pleasure, particularly those from marginalised communities.


Co-Creating Regenerative Learning in Community Spaces: Led by Suzie Cahn and Hannah Mole of Carraig Dulra, this session explored how permaculture education served as a collaborative, empowering, and regenerative force within communities. They shared stories from over a decade of co-developing an inclusive Permaculture Design Course (PDC) rooted in community action and ecological ethics.


Shifting Edges:   The session was led by the team behind DEFY, a 3-year collaboration between STAND, Comhlámh, finep and Zavod-Voluntariat. Participants learnt about how to build educator reflexivity and a readiness to host others in their learning.


LYCS Global Citizenship through Theatre: Led by Ellen Corby Lourdes Youth & Community Services (LYCS), this session covered the evaluation of LYCS Global Citizenship through Theatre programmes, and the training they offer to services interested in the use of participatory methods to explore complex social justice issues and their solutions in an active, positive way.

September 26, 2025
Date: Tuesday, 04 November, from 3.30–4.30pm Location: Online via Zoom IDEA is thrilled to invite members to the online launch of our new “Theory of Impact for Global Citizenship Education” on Tuesday, 04 November, from 3.30–4.30pm, Online via Zoom. During this session, we will present the model, share insights into the process behind its development, and explore how it will be used to strengthen impact across the sector. We will also introduce a new tool in progress, an interactive data visualisation map designed to showcase our collective impact as a network. For many years, IDEA and its members have been grappling with the concept of impact in Development Education/Global Citizenship Education (hereinafter ‘GCE’). As GCE practitioners, tracking impact helps us to identify how, where and with whom our work is creating positive change, as well as investigating areas in which our impact could be stronger. Furthermore, we can also benefit from examining the collective impact of GCE carried out by the wide-ranging work of IDEA members, and from exploring how these impacts contribute to the major social changes to which the GCE community aspires. Driven therefore by the need to understand how projects and programmes are collectively “making a difference” in IDEA we looked at models that could help us visualise and capture GCE “impact networks”. We formulated our vision of impact and then a theory of how we expect this desired impact to be achieved to allow us to map our activities and collect data to corroborate that theory. This Theory of Impact model is how we hope to illustrate this complex GCE impact network. Building on work done by IDEA over many years including building sectoral capacity in using Results Frameworks for GCE, our Quality & Impact working group, engagement with Irish Aid on their Performance Measurement Framework (PMF), and the successful roll-out of a Code of Good Practice for DE/GCE, this Theory of Impact represent the next stage of our effort to ‘develop a consistent approach to measuring impact among the sector’. We are therefore thrilled to invite you to the presentation of our ‘Theory of Impact for GCE’. At this online presentation, we will tell you about the process that led to the creation of this model, how it will be used and what we hope it could bring to the sector. We will also touch on a new tool being developed based on the model, which should allow the creation of an interactive data visualisation map of our collective impact as a network. Join us as we launch into this exciting new phase of our Impact Measurement work. Join us as we begin this exciting new phase of our Impact Measurement work. Register below!
September 26, 2025
Date: 11 November, 10.30am – 4.30pm. Location: IDEA offices, 6 Gardiner Row IDEA launched its new Advocacy Toolkit and GCE Policy Guide resource pack in early March. The advocacy toolkit and policy guide were developed for IDEA members to strengthen their capacity to effectively advocate with policymakers and to actively engage in policy processes on GCE in Ireland and the wider world. IDEA will facilitate a full-day in-person workshop on these resources in the IDEA offices on Tuesday, 11 November ,10.30am – 4.30pm. Places are limited to 20 participants and will be given on a first come, first served basis. Please note that this is a repeat of the workshop that took place in May and is aimed at members who did not have the opportunity to participate in May. A vegetarian lunch will be provided. Register below!
September 17, 2025
Date: Wednesday 26 November, 10.00am – 3.30pm Location: Richmond Barracks, Inchicore, Dublin 8, D08 YY05 IDEA is looking forward to welcoming all members of the Code of Good Practice for Development Education to our next Code network meeting on Wednesday, 26 November, in Richmond Barracks in Inchicore, Dublin. There are places for two representatives (staff, volunteers, etc.) from each Code member. One of the commitments in joining the Code is to contribute to the Community of Practice for this Code, including sharing successes and learning with other Code members and attending at least one of two Code network meetings annually. Register below!