Ignite Community Programme Showcase: The Projects Behind the Day

The Ignite Community Programme Showcase brought together young people from across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to share the projects they've built tackling issues that matter to them. Held at Ormeau Labs in Belfast, the day highlighted bold ideas, practical solutions, and work entirely driven by young people, addressing real challenges in their communities and beyond.

The Ignite Community Programme is designed for young people engaged in non-formal education, youth organisations and clubs seeking to develop their skills and create positive change. By providing a supportive, collaborative space, the programme empowers participants to explore ideas, build confidence, and turn what matters to them into meaningful action.

Here's a closer look at the projects featured at this showcase:

Blue Cycle - Donegal Youth Service

The Challenge: Plastic pollution is a major environmental challenge, with large quantities of plastic waste entering oceans and taking hundreds of years to break down. Current waste management and recycling systems cannot keep pace with the amount of plastic being produced.

What They Did: Young people researched the scale of the global ocean plastic crisis, an estimated 6 million tonnes entering the world's oceans annually out of 450 million tonnes produced each year, and explored how biodegradable materials could offer a more sustainable alternative. They presented statistics showing the potential environmental benefits of moving towards biodegradable products.

The Impact: The project raised awareness of the scale of plastic pollution and demonstrated the potential for sustainable, biodegradable alternatives to reduce waste and reliance on conventional plastics.

Bee Army - Kippie

The Challenge: Bee populations have declined significantly, threatening an important part of our ecosystem.

What They Did: Using Minecraft, young people designed bee-friendly habitats and demonstrated how public green spaces could be transformed to support bees, including pollinator gardens, water fountains surrounded by planting, and a "hive house."

The Impact: The project showed how communities can use existing green spaces to create more welcoming habitats for pollinators, and raised awareness of how small changes can make a real difference.

Cyanotypes - Arts Care

The Challenge: Young people in foster care needed a safe, creative space to explore feelings around friendship, loneliness, trust and support.

What They Did: Brought together via The Fostering Network, the group used cyanotype processes and the natural environment at Gortin Glen Forest Park to create artwork reflecting themes important to them, incorporating the natural world into their artistic work while examining relationships and support networks.

The Impact: The project created a genuine space for young people to explore difficult feelings through art, and encouraged them to recognise sources of support already around them, including social workers and friendships.

Mullaghmatt50 (Teach Na nDaoine) - Young Social Innovators

The Challenge: Young people wanted to explore what matters to them in their community and identify opportunities for positive change, marking the community's 50th anniversary.

What They Did: Through a summer social innovation programme, young people explored their experiences, identified important places, spaces and services, and created a Building Blocks model showing their vision for the community over the next fifty years.

The Impact: The model gives young people a tangible advocacy tool to share their ideas with community stakeholders, highlight areas for investment, and encourage others to listen, engage and respond. The finished model, framed and encased, is set to tour locally, including the library, council office, museum and Garda station, opening up policy conversations with stakeholders well beyond the showcase itself.

SCANI - Horn of Africa People's Aid NI (HAPANI)

The Challenge: Young people and community members identified challenges around inequality, isolation, integration and access to education and employment, including the difficulty of having qualifications from other countries recognised.

What They Did: The group explored their own experiences of inequality and community integration, identified barriers to employment and education, and considered how overseas qualifications could be better recognised and how communities could provide safer spaces for people to connect.

The Impact: The project helped identify barriers affecting migrant and minority communities, and highlighted the importance of equality, qualification recognition, integration, and safe spaces for building friendships and support networks.

Wait Hard - Donegal Youth Service

The Challenge: Young people can face a significant gap between being referred to mental health services and their first engagement with those services.

What They Did: The group explored the idea of creating a supportive space during that waiting period, between referral and first engagement with formal mental health services.

The Impact: The project aims to provide young people with support during the waiting period, helping to bridge the gap between referral and accessing the mental health support they need.

Work In Progress - Donegal Youth Service

The Challenge: Young people can face significant barriers to accessing meaningful employment and short-term work opportunities.

What They Did: The group developed a youth employment scheme and website concept connecting young people with local employers offering short-term work, allowing employers to advertise opportunities and young people to find available work.

The Impact: The project could make it easier for young people and employers to connect, creating more accessible short-term employment opportunities and giving young people greater exposure to the workplace.

Belfast Pothole Reports - Young Social Innovators

The Challenge: Road defects across Belfast usually get reported into a void, with no confirmation or tracking, leaving residents with no way of knowing whether anything happens next.

What They Did: Built through Ignite's Summer Challenge, the team created a civic reporting tool: pin the exact location of a pothole, attach a photo, and track it live through reported, in progress, and fixed, with area-by-area hotspot pages across BT1 to BT8 showing severity and live report counts. Verified reports get forwarded to DfI Roads with an official reference kept on record.

The Impact: The site, translated into more than 100 languages, gives residents visible follow-through on a problem that affects almost everyone who uses Belfast's roads, and stands as a working example of what young people can build when handed real tools, including ethical AI, and a real problem to solve.

These eight projects show what can happen when young people are given the space to identify a problem, explore their own ideas and make something happen. From art that opens up difficult conversations to a civic tool already making a difference, each project began with a young person seeing something in their community that could be better and deciding to do something about it.

Ignite Community Programme is supported by the PEACEPLUS Programme and managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB), helping young people build connections across communities and borders. The programme is delivered by Young Social Innovators alongside Arts Care, Donegal Youth Service, Horn of Africa People's Aid NI (HAPANI) and Kippie NI. Their support makes it possible for young people to take their ideas further and turn them into action.

Want to see what these young leaders are working on, or find out how you can get involved? Reach out to us at Ignite@ysi.ie