Dear Minister Foley

As you are aware the Cork life Centre is a voluntary organization offering an alternative learning environment to marginalized young people in Cork for the last twenty-one years.

The Centre and its staff offer students tuition in Junior and Leaving Cert subjects and support them in their preparation for these State Exams. The approach to education is a holistic one. The value is in the social education of young people as much as on the academic. Over the years the young people in the Centre have overcome many obstacles and yet made outstanding achievements such as students who were winners at the YouthStart European Entrepreneurship Awards in Vienna, Foroige's NFTE Innovator of the Year, a docuseries on Virgin Media. The students are citizen scientists who regularly drive a range of research projects in collaboration with community groups and 3rd level partners. The young people have travelled to Geneva and Brussels to speak to academics and legislators in relation to youth justice. They have travelled to Buenos Aires to meet with the UN where they helped build a house for a family experiencing homelessness. The Centre has produced artists, published authors, 3rd level graduates and activists but most importantly young people who are happier and more confident to take on whatever path is the right one for them. 

Most of the staff in the Centre are either unpaid or receive small amounts of money and this is largely funded through philanthropy. The staff and young people from the Centre attended an Oireachtas committee and described the work, ethos and successes of the Centre. There was unanimous support from all parties and none that the Cork Life Centre should be funded.

In May 2020 the Centre was informed that they would after 20 years receive the funding, they need to be sustainable, however it transpired that the funding was not in fact an income stream for the service. Instead the Department of Education has proposed that they will transfer in surplus staff from a range of other settings (many of whom have no experience of working with children dealing with a range of social and emotional challenges). There is great uncertainty about what will happen with existing staff, who have between 12 and15 years’ work experience in the Centre. The Centre is not a school, it is a unique education Centre with its own model of work, ethos and culture. Central to which is the relationship between the teachers and the young people, which has taken years to develop.

The future of the much loved, much needed and indeed very successful educational service that is the Cork Life Centre is now at risk.

We urge you to speak to your team in the Department of Education to appropriately fund this service, diverting resources from other services and without security for the existing staff will not allow the Centre to continue to deliver in the way that it does.

Kind Regards

Sharon Lambert on behalf of the Friends of Cork Life Centre group.