Thank You to our Intern Sharon Cahill

Sharon Cahill has been on placement from NUI Maynooth, Youth and Community Studies for the last 13 weeks. Sharon has been working mainly with Elaine Mahon on the Challenging the Crisis project, in particular assisiting with work related to the network of Young Global Advocates. Sharon has also worked with all the IDEA staff helping in a wide variety of ways.

Sharon brought great value and a fresh perspective to IDEA and we would like to thank her for all of her work!

One piece of work that she carried out was in relation to Development Education in Youth work settings. Following on form IDEA.s recently published Strategy for DE in Adult and Community Education, Sharon looked at the potential for strategic aims within the Youth sector. We'll leave you with Sharon's own insights on the role of Development Education:

What has come to my attention while on placement and while doing my research is that the Development Education sector needs to come together as a collective unit and link more into communities to raise awareness. I feel more people especially young people need to have an understanding and be educated on issues related to Dev Ed, so that they critically asses their situation and challenge inequality’s facing them.

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 26, 2025
Date: 06 November a nd 18 November from 3.30–4.30pm Location: IDEA offices, 6 Gardiner Row, Dublin 1 Due to positive feedback following a workshop during our annual conference, we are thrilled to invite members to a full 2-part interactive workshop about “Racial Justice” on 06 November and 18 November. This event will take place in-person in Dublin. Our facilitators Bronwyn April and Mdahyelya Bassi will guide participants through a critical exploration of the interconnections between racial justice, philanthropy, migration, and decolonisation within global and Irish contexts. The workshop will delve into how historical and ongoing colonial legacies influence contemporary issues of racial equity and social justice in Ireland and beyond. The dates for this event are fast approaching, so if you have any specific accessibility requirements, please email events@ideaonline.ie as soon as possible. Places for this event are limited, and registration is mandatory. Deadline to register is Monday, 04 November. Register below!