Leah
"Through the social action project opportunity with Seeds of Hope I have chosen to do it on youth workers in schools..."
What is your name?
Leah Myers
Where are you from / what is your country of birth?
Belfast, Northern Ireland
What are your career aspirations?
My dream career has always been to become a youth worker and throughout my life I took every opportunity offered and completed qualifications, training and volunteering in youth work in different types of youth work. Last year I completed an internship for Youth Initiatives Banbridge then at the end of that I was offered a job as the 10-14s youth worker which was a real full circle moment for me as it was dream come true. I am also now studying community youth work at Ulster University Belfast alongside my job. Long term, though, I would love to become a full-time youth worker in a school. This dream has stemmed from my own experiences in school and involvement with youth workers within that, but also during my intern year, I went over to Youth Initiatives Scotland, and they are based full-time in a school. From that experience, it has really fuelled my passion for wanting to see that in Northern Ireland and for that to be my ideal career path.
How can you see seeds of hope helping you achieve those aspirations?
Through the social action project opportunity with Seeds of Hope I have chosen to do it on youth workers in schools and my hope is that I will create a resource and run a pilot project of my vision for youth workers in schools. My work are supporting me in this and allowing me to use the schools that I am involved in to hopefully parter with and deliver the resource and feed back to my work to hopefully implement it in to the workplace.
Why do you want to emphasise developing on youth work in educational settings?
Mostly through my experience in school it was always youth workers there to support me and teachers are so overworked and stretched covering more than just one job so having a youth worker would help ease that and provide more intentional support for young people as they navigate through their school career. School years can sometimes be the most difficult years for young people and for them to reach their full potential some support throughout their time could be a great help.