The Youth Budget 22 petition has now closed – with 3,085 signatures!

Huge thanks to all of you who supported young people by signing and sharing this petition. 3,085 of you used your voices to call on the Government to properly fund youth work in Budget 2022, and ensure that young people in Ireland get the pandemic recovery that they deserve.

WHAT’S NEXT?

We have created a booklet which contains the stories from this campaign, as well as all of the signatures collected. We’ve shared this with Minister Roderic O’Gorman, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and other key decision makers, to show them just how much support there is for proper funding of youth work.

Read the full document

We’ll update you after the Budget 2022 announcement on October 12th and share our analysis of what the new Budget will do – or not do – for young people and youth work. If you haven’t already signed up to NYCI emails, you can sign up now. 

WHY THIS CALL FOR EXTRA FUNDING?

Young people have been hard hit by the pandemic. In the last year, we have seen:

  • A chronic rise in youth unemployment – 28% of young people are affected
  • Serious impact on young people’s mental health
  • Difficulty for young people in getting support from friends and networks
  • A huge number of young people missing out on key life landmarks and experiences
  • An interruption to education that has caused massive difficulties for many young people

Ireland’s young population is growing all the time – we will have over 1 million people aged under 24 by the year 2025, a full fifth of our population. Young people are such an important part of our society, and they need and deserve real, meaningful support.

“1,000 youth groups closed; 7,000 youth work volunteers disengaged and 80,000 young people not benefiting from youth work”

–  those are the stark headline figures emerging from our new research report ‘Youth Work and Covid-19: 2021 Review of the Youth Work Sector Response’ which shows how hard young people have been hit by the pandemic and finds that funding will be needed to re-engage young people and volunteers. Your support in highlighting this has been so important. 

Thank you again to everyone who supported this petition – we are so grateful to you for using your voice for young people.