Learners as Leaders: Stories from the Community Changemakers Programme
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December 19, 2025
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The Community Changemakers Programme was created for those who are motivated to make a positive difference in their communities. Held at Maynooth University, this programme aimed to inspire and empower learners to lead meaningful change in their local areas. Eleven adult learners from across the country received training and support to identify issues that have impacted them or others locally, turn their ideas into action, and drive meaningful change in their communities.
Learners who participated in the Changemakers programme have recently attended an education course provided by the AONTAS Community Education Network.
- Cranmore Community Co-operative Society
- Longford Women’s Link
- Alternative to Violence Project
- The Lantern Project
- Cork Simon Community Centre
- Ballybeen Women’s Centre
- Henrietta Adult and Community Education
Finbarr Savage
I was fortunate to be selected to take part in the AONTAS Community Changemakers programme, an experience that has truly inspired and energised me. Over the two-day workshop, I had the opportunity to meet passionate, like-minded individuals committed to building stronger, more inclusive communities. The programme encouraged me to reflect on my own role in community development and gave me the confidence to take meaningful action.
As a volunteer with Crosscare Youth Services, I have seen firsthand the importance of creating safe and supportive environments for young people. Crosscare originally developed the idea of establishing a youth café -an accessible, youth-led space where young people could gather, connect, and feel a sense of belonging. Inspired by this vision, my Community Changemakers project focused on working closely with a group of LGBTQ+ young people involved in Crosscare. I wanted to listen to their experiences, understand the challenges they face, and support them in shaping a space that truly reflects their needs.
Over the past six weeks, I have been meeting regularly with this group, and their openness, creativity, and leadership have been remarkable. Through our conversations and planning sessions, their vision for The Drop has come to life. The Drop will be a youth café created by young people for young people - an inclusive, welcoming, and safe environment where everyone can feel comfortable being themselves.
The young people have taken the lead in imagining what The Drop should be, from its atmosphere to its purpose within the community. Watching their confidence grow and seeing their ideas transform into a real, tangible project has been incredibly rewarding.
I am deeply grateful to AONTAS for the opportunity and guidance provided through the Community Changemakers programme. It has helped turn Crosscare’s initial idea into a vibrant, youth-driven initiative that will have lasting impact.
Nikita Thompson
I wanted to help mothers who, like myself, have experienced maternal mental health difficulties. I was very fortunate to receive support through a programme called MAS, a perinatal support group. Through this group, I became a volunteer and went on to speak at a perinatal mental health seminar. I was also involved in working with public health organisations to co-produce a perinatal mental health information leaflet.
Following this experience, I became involved with AONTAS and community organisations. These opportunities strengthened my commitment to supporting mothers and families. Taking part in this course has helped me recognise that I can continue to make a meaningful contribution, and it has increased my confidence in my ability to do so.
My long-term goal is to establish a peer support group within hospital maternity units, so that mothers experiencing perinatal mental health challenges can access understanding, compassionate support at a crucial time in their lives.
Jessica Leni Miles
I had the pleasure of joining the Community Change Makers Programme in August, and during the two-day workshop I was inspired and left with the realisation that I was already making a change in my community, and the drive to do even more. Being someone who pursues education in the community is already a step towards change. Your new knowledge or skills can be used to support the community.
The idea I developed at the workshop was to create a safe space for everyone to access during the evening, with a strong focus on young people in my community. After 6pm, there just isn’t really anywhere outside of pubs and chippers for people to go. I volunteer at a community restaurant on Thursday nights, which now closes at 6:30, and with Food Not Bombs every second Monday of the month, where we start serving food at 6 -so those are two things I’m part of that happen after 6. But the dream would be to open a safe space that people could go to after 6 and spend a few hours.
Many people are looking forward to having this kind of space, and young people are interested in helping to manage it to support its existence. I haven’t found the right location yet, but the seed planted during the workshop has been nurtured, and the idea is still growing strong. The even bigger idea is a 24-hour community access centre, but we can grow into that.
Jakki O’Donovan
I developed a project aimed at raising awareness of creative opportunities in the city and providing participants with hands-on experience in building sustainable creative practices. Through activities like market-selling, clothes swaps, and collaborative making, participants explore what it’s like to run their own creative business.
The course places a strong emphasis on teamwork, community connections, and sustainability, with projects such as upcycling denim into new products. Having attended the centre myself for sewing, I have seen many people complete all the courses and then look for their next step. I feel that I have access and connections in a few areas and would like to support potential growth and ventures, making opportunities available for others.
Nadiia Kasianenko
To me, AONTAS’s Community Changemakers Programme was a transformative journey that turned my raw experience into something larger than myself. Over two days of workshops, one-to-one mentoring, and constant encouragement, Larisa, Ruby, and Grace helped me shape a deeply personal story of anger into something that could resonate beyond my own perspective. Thanks to their unwavering support, my Medium piece, “Encountering the Shadows: My Experience with Ireland’s Traveller Community,” came to life.
To anyone reading this who feels that something is wrong: trust that instinct. You don’t have to fix the entire world alone. Sometimes the bravest, most powerful act is simply speaking up, starting a conversation, or adding your thread to a story already being told. Larisa, Ruby, and Grace showed me that our stories matter, that they can be heard, and that they can move things (however slowly) toward light. Your voice is needed. Use it. The world becomes a little better every single time someone does. My Experience with Ireland’s Traveller Community | by Nadia Kasian | Dec, 2025 | Medium
Kate Glavin
I do some support work in The Lantern Project @ Nano Nagle Place in Cork City. I had some participants write down a song of their choice and their thoughts and feelings about it. Over the course of a few weeks, I recorded their written words in their own voices and compiled it into a video that was then shared on social media.
My wish was to bring people together and give individuals a voice through music. It’s something most of us share. We all have at least a few songs that we use to uplift us, ground us and even release pent up emotions. We have songs that spark a memory from long ago be it good or bad.
There’s no wrong answer. A happy song to one person evokes sorrow in another. My hope is that there’s beauty and shared understanding in our differences, after all that’s what makes us unique. Link to video: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1N8H4cuuww/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Robert Cullen
I first heard about the AONTAS Community Changemakers Programme via email from a representative of the Alternative to Violence Project Ireland. I had engaged with AVP whilst serving time in prison. The community education programmes run by AVP sparked a desire within me to understand violence on a deeper level. This desire culminated in pursuing a degree in social science whilst in custody and reading a vast amount of literature on violence. Exploring criminological literature for college and the violence literature for my own growth and understanding slowly brought me into contact with some black feminist work – Angela Davis and Bell Hooks – that focused on patriarchal gender norms, linking them to masculinity and male violence.
I applied for the AONTAS CCP programme as soon as I read that it was about improving our communities. I had been running workshops on violence and addiction within the prison setting for years, so this really aligned with what I was already doing. As the programme required the development of a project that could improve my community, I decided to create a new workshop with the knowledge I had gained and roll that out for men in custody. The workshop looks at patriarchal gender norms and raises awareness of their destructive nature for the men in the workshop but also for the women in their lives. The topic of the workshop include love, belonging, connection, examining beliefs and values, and also how patriarchal thinking contributes to the female objectification and domestic and sexual gender-based violence.
Through the development of this workshop, I have since collaborated with the Success Stories Programme, a US based anti-patriarchal community education programme that touches on all the topics I had originally planned but under a format already developed over years of experience dealing with incarcerated men. The plan for 2026 is to roll out the SSP to all men on post-release supervision for domestic and/or sexual gender-based violence in Ireland while also targeting youth groups to combat the rise of toxic masculinity in that cohort.
Interested?
For more information or any queries, please contact Larisa at lsioneriu@aontas.com
This project is funded through the New European Agenda for Adult Learning (NEAAL)
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
