Case Manager, Amanda and the Advocates in Cork were recently involved in a great participation project with Pieta House in Cork. The project involved a number of young people and Advocates working on a three-part art piece where the young people highlighted the theme of ‘a Gift of Hope’.

The group of young people donated this art piece to Pieta House where they travelled to make the presentation on Wednesday 30th April.  They met with the full team of staff in Pieta House and the young people and YAP Ireland staff received a great reception. The art piece is now displayed in a room named after Donal Walsh, the young person who died from cancer last year and who did a lot of work around mental health awareness. The centre informed us that they will send a letter to Donal’s parents explaining this art piece and the generous gift that the young people from YAP Cork gave the centre.

One of the young people, Megan, wrote a wonderful and moving speech on the day and delivered it with such passion.

I would like to congratulate Amanda and her team and of course all of the young people for this wonderful gesture to another worthy cause.  We look forward to working in partnership with Pieta House in the future.

Martin Ryan, Service Manager

Speech by Megan, young person from Cork

“The average person tells 4 lies a day, or 1,460 a year, a total of 87,600 by the age of 60 and the most common lie of all is “I am fine”. Both Pieta House and YAP know that sometimes you are not fine, and that is OK too, that is why they are here to help.

Today as young people involved in the YAP programme, we are here to present our art project called “a Gift of Hope” to you. We chose to give this piece to Pieta House because the issues around suicide and self harming is something that we are all aware of in our daily lives. We hope it brings you as much enjoyment as we had putting it together.

Each one of us is part of this canvas, all of our ideas and personalities are represented in it. As you can see it has many different materials and textures. It represents hope and the movement from a dark place to a brighter future. This project has inspired hope in all of us and we hope it will do the same in its new home here with you.  So I will leave you with this quote. “Learn from yesterday, live for today and hope for tomorrow. Thank you.”