Humans of YSI: Sr Stanislaus Kennedy

The woman who helped make youth-led social innovation possible.

Sr Stanislaus Kenney and Rachel Collier, founders of Young Social Innovators

As Young Social Innovators celebrates 25 years of youth-led change, we’re also remembering the woman whose belief in young people helped make it all possible: Sr Stanislaus Kennedy.

Today, more than 190,000 young people have taken part in YSI programmes. Behind that movement is a simple but powerful idea that Sr Stan championed from the very beginning: that young people are not a problem to be solved, but a force for change to be supported.

Our beloved Sr Stan, co-founder of YSI, believed deeply in the potential of young people. Not in an abstract way, but in the everyday reality of classrooms, conversations and ideas waiting to be given space.

But her journey toward founding Young Social Innovators began decades earlier. In the 1980s Dublin, Sr Stan met Rachel Collier, who would become both a close collaborator and friend. Together they worked on research exploring the experiences of homeless women in the city. Listening to those stories shaped their thinking about social change and the importance of designing solutions with people, not just for them.

1980s, Sr Stanislaus Kennedy speaking at a Conference in the Mansion House - Pilot Schemes to Combat Poverty. 

In 1985, they helped establish Focus Point, which would later become Focus Ireland, now Ireland’s largest homeless non-profit organisation. Over the years of working in the field, sr Stan and Rachel developed a strong belief in collaborative, human-centred approaches to social change. These ideas would later help shape Young Social Innovators.

By the early 2000s, there were still very few opportunities for young people in Ireland have their ideas heard or taken seriously. The issue was particularly true for young people from marginalised backgrounds. Sr Stan and Rachel had seen first-hand how empowering people to speak out and act could transform lives.

In 2001, Young Social Innovators began as a small programme. Within a few years, it grew into an organisation dedicated to social innovation education, supporting thousands of young people and educators across Ireland.

At the heart of it all was a belief Sr Stan often expressed very simply:

Through YSI, young people become part of the solution, not the problem.

Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, the Cllr. John Buttimer and students from Beara Community School at the 2013 Munster Region Young Social Innovators Speak Out at Cork City Hall. 

She challenged the stigma around young people in Ireland and believed strongly that education should give them the tools to shape the future.

YSI cultivates the citizens of tomorrow. YSI is nurturing and cultivating the new citizens of tomorrow, trusting that they know better than us how to change the world for good. All we have to do is to fire their passion and imagination and give them the social tools to learn to become, in Seamus Heaney's phrase, ‘dual citizens’ - citizens of their country and citizens of the Republic of Conscience.”

For Stan, social innovation wasn’t something only for experts or institutions. It began with listening, particularly to people who are directly affected by the issues being discussed. She also believed deeply in the human capacity to imagine something better, and to act on it

Those affected by change are often the best promoters of that change. In YSI learning about change is integral to learning about social innovation. Everyone can create change: change in how we think, feel and care for other people and change that is active, relevant and new…. As humans we are creative imaginers, and we can make change happen because we have the imagination and the vision and the foresight that shape change. The experience of knowing this can have a profound impact on personal development.

Over the past 25 years, young people involved in YSI have explored and acted on issues ranging from mental health and climate action to equality, community wellbeing and global justice. For 25 years, every year, they’ve brought fresh thinking, empathy and determination to the issues they and their communities care about.

Sr Stan believed that energy and idealism were among Ireland’s greatest resources.

Sr Stan and John Rocha, 2014, unveiling of John Rocha's 'Youth Innovation Hope' design for Young Social Innovators. The design was translated into a lapel and sculpture award to be presented to exceptional young people and educators at the annual YSI Awards. 

New thinking and New Ideas: Young people they have created new thinking, new ideas and new ventures which have had a profound impact on themselves and on those affected by the particular issues they have chosen to study and to take action. Today Ireland faces many difficult challenges. I believe it can face these in a very positive way by drawing on the large reserves of energy and idealism of our young people. YSI demonstrates how this can be done in very practical, meaningful and inspiring ways.

But she often returned to something even more fundamental than innovation: trust.

Trust is vital for democracy. These are testing times for Ireland and the world. We are now discovering that trust is the basis of our economic system as it is the basis of our political and social systems. When trust goes, the very foundation of our democracy is in peril. Our deepest yearning as human beings is to be valued and loved. Love is not created by legal charters and constitutions, vital though these are, but grows out of our relationships and connections. If we want to change our reality, then we have to have the social tool to do that - a way of listening to each other, talking to each other, connecting to each other, trusting each other.

Sr Stan and students from St. Mark's Community School in Tallaght at the YSI Speak Out 2016, Dublin

As YSI marks its 25th year, her words feel as relevant as ever.

Her vision continues through the thousands of young people who take part in YSI every year. Young people asking questions, young people imagining better ways forward and young people taking action in their communities.

And perhaps her hope for the future was captured in one simple wish: 

I’d like to see every school having YSI central to their teaching and beyond that, too, at third level.

25 years on, that vision continues to grow.

And it lives on in the 190,000 changemakers who have discovered that they have the power to make change happen.