The Aloysius Foundation is a group of Transition Year students that represent St. Vincent De Paul in our school. We chose the name ‘Aloysius Foundation’ because St. Aloysius is the patron saint of young people. Our group comprises over thirty students. We all became involved in Young St. Vincent De Paul for many reasons like helping others and getting involved in our community but our main reason overall was that we think social justice is a growing problem in society today.

Throughout this school year, we have done many activities and fundraisers to raise awareness for SVP. We started the year by re-launching the Aloysius Foundation in our school. We then had a very successful bag pack in Tesco and raised €772. With the funds we raised, we bought vouchers for teenagers in Carlow for Christmas as we felt that sometimes the food appeal and the toy appeal may overlook teenagers. We held a food appeal before Christmas and our group helped pack the food donations into hampers along with students from other schools. Just before our Christmas break we went carol singing with our school choir. We raised over €300. In January, we gave out homemade treats to local organisations for ‘Blue Monday’. We held a wellbeing and meditation workshop with Dr. Noel Keating for our committee members in February.

In early May, we went to the Young St. Vincent De Paul Regional Youth day in Waterford I.T. This day was to showcase what we did all year. Our group performed a song called ‘Rise Up’ and we got a great reaction from the crowd. Report written by: Abbie Nolan, Niamh Nolan and Caoimhe Connolly.