Secondary education programmes

We offer five key secondary education programmes, as well as workshops and talks, for students to gain a deeper understanding of challenges that people are facing in communities all over the world.

Concern Debates is an all-Ireland year long competition for senior cycle students. Each year, over 140 schools across the island of Ireland debate topics from climate change to corporate responsibility.

The programme gives students the opportunity to learn skills in research, critical thinking, and public speaking. It also helps students to reflect on, and try to tackle, some of the most important issues facing the world today. This year the programme is going online!

Interested in the Concern Debates?

Speak Act Do is Concern’s school programme to engage students and schools in global issues whatever the location or context of the school. It is designed to be flexible, led by the school and supported by the Concern schools team. You can sign up two students to a whole school (and anything in between).  It can be used as a stand-alone project, or embedded into CSPE or Politics and Society courses.

The aim of the programme is to:

1. Develop student’s knowledge about issues such as inequality, poverty and hunger and how they impact on communities in the Global South 

2. Make connections between issues in Ireland and globally

3. Support students to create and undertake projects to take action

Students will showcase their project at our annual Agents of Change student event which takes place in March/April each year, with the opportunity to win a prize for best project! 

Interested in taking part in Speak Act Do?

We offer free development education workshops and talks for secondary schools on a range of challenges facing the communities which Concern work in around the world. The themes that we cover include poverty, hunger, gender equality, climate change and conflict. In an hour long workshops, students will consider why these problems exist in the world today, how they impact on people’s lives and reflect on how they can take action on this issue.

This year, all of our workshops are moving online! We will work with individual schools and the context that you are working in to provide workshops on a platform of your choice and in a way that works best for your students.

Interested in hosting a school talk or workshop? 

TY Academy is our two part work experience offering for secondary students. The first part of the work experience is a week-long programme (this runs three times over February and March) where students will learn how they can become active global citizens and find out about what it is like to work in an NGO. The second part of the programme is an independent action project that the student will run in their own school community and then share at our end of year celebration event, Agents of Change.

For the next academic year (2020/21) we are moving our work experience online in response to the Covid-19 virus. We are currently finalising our exciting programme to ensure that even though students are not in the Concern office, they still get a flavour of what it is like to work for an NGO.

Interested in taking part in the TY Academy? Fill in the below form and post/email it back to us.

Agents of Change is our annual end-of-year student event which celebrates primary and secondary students taking local action on global issues! In the past, these have included awareness campaigns about conflicts in the world, practical action on food waste in schools and communities, fundraising actions and speaking out about injustices. This event gives students the opportunity to showcase their projects and meet like-minded peers from around the country.

Interested in taking part in Agents of Change?  

Each year, the United Nations marks key dates to bring attention to global issues which affect many people’s access to human rights.

We offer focused workshops to raise awareness and mark specific World Days. This year, you will be able to book your class in for a one hour slot over the week that the world day falls, on to take part in an interactive online session focusing on why there is a need to raise awareness for this issue and what students can do to take action. Contact us to book in your time and discuss which platform is best suited to your school!

• World Food Day 12th – 16th October 2020
• International Women’s Day 1st – 5th March 2021

Interested in taking part in a World Day Workshop?

Project Us is Concern’s movement for change in Ireland. It is a space (online and off) for communities to gather together to discuss the global and local issues that matter most to us.

For teachers, we are organising World Café’s online to explore how issues at the local level connect to the Sustainable Development Goals. These are beneficial to teachers of any subject and of any age group to reflect on issues which may come up in Global Citizenship Education, how to tackle inequalities both locally and globally, as well as a chance to boost your knowledge and understanding of issues such as hunger, gender equality and climate change.