Woman of the Year

So, Julie...how do you feel about winning the Woman of the Year title?

I could not believe it. It was such a shock. I just couldn't believe it.

You started community work at a very young age. How young were you and what did you start doing?

I was just a participant, just like anybody else, going to youth club and then I just started helping out.

But what motivated you? Were your parents into community work or anything like that?

Years ago my father would have helped out in schools and that at summer schemes and stuff like that and I would have given him a hand. I just really enjoyed it and decided to keep it going.

I know that you have been studying alongside all of this. Can you tell me what you are studying at the minute?

I am doing my Honours Degree in Community and Youth Work and I am in third year now.

So it is obviously something you want to make a career out of?

Yes.

So what is it that you get out of it that you so enjoy?

Well, the smallest things can make the biggest difference when you are working with young people. You mightn't always see it right away, it might even be years after when you meet the young people up the town and they remember you and they come up to you and chat to you and say things like 'Oh I remember doing that project with you and it was just brilliant'.

I know it hasn't been a great couple of months in the City news-wise, and one of the things that attracted the judges' attention to your entry is that you have done so much cross-commjnity work. What groups do you work with?

I work with groups from Newbuildings, the Bogside and the Travelling Community at the minute with the Paths Project. It's community relations work and I encourage them to look at their own prejudices and really look at themselves and generate their self-awareness and challenge attitudes and find out where their values lie and really encourage them to sample new things and give them opportunities to try new things and situations as well.

What do you see is the value of doing that in a place like Londonderry?

It is a big thing because The Troubles generated so much history in the City in the past and in the future that is something that has to be addressed and it is something that is not going to go away.

Given the recent news, even in relation to substance abuse and young people taking their own life by suicide, what can the organisations that you work with offer young people that they do not get from their own peer groups?

Giving them the proper information, the right information. What young people hear from their friends and others isn't always true and we can give them the right information and teach them how to make good, informed decisions and get them talking about that.

What do you get out of all this for yourself? I seems to me that emotionally the work you do is emotionally demanding...

It is demanding. I just really enjoy the work I do with the young people and they motivate me. I get a lot of support from family and friends and I could not do what I do without them either.

In the past you have done a lot of things voluntarily. Can you outline the first organisations you have worked with and some of the projects you have successfully drawn down funding for?

I started out in Newbuildings Youth Club and then I became a volunteer, and it was after that that I got into youth work and then I was employed as a part-time member of staff and also then I went on to secure a post with Youth Action Northern Ireland. I worked there for 10 years and I started there as a peerage carer doing 15 hours a week and went on to work my way up to a project worker and community relations work, working with young people in the Waterside.

While you were doing that were you aware of or did you feel some of the attitudes that some of the young people had maybe reinforced some of the things that you had grown up with as well? Were they motivating thoughts that made you want to reach out to what you would have perceived as 'the other side'?

Yes, definitely. I have lived in Newbuildings all my life and I feel that I have a real understanding for the young people from the Protestant community and I faced the same issues that they faced and I think it has made me able to work with young people around these issues because I know where they are coming from.

When you were working with them and you then worked with other young people from, say, the Bogside, did you find that they had the same or similar attitudes to people from your community?

The exact same attitudes. It is all about how young people are brought up in society, the Troubles and the legacy of the past, which makes a big impact on young people's lives. It is amazing what young people say and think and their prejudices and attitudes, and when you ask them where they got that piece of information from it is apparent they don't even know what they are saying sometimes. Sometimes it just rolls off their tongues.

What would your ideal job be when you graduate from university?

Just to continue to do what I am doing from a full time capacity. I've got two young children at the minute, who are five and three, so hopefully I will be able to work in a full-time capacity doing what I am doing.

Do you see your life as continuing to live in and work with young people in Newbuildings, or is there anywhere else you would like to move on to?

I would actually like to work with young offenders and young people who really have high needs and are considered 'high risk'.

Why?

I have done a lot of community relations work and I found it more challenging to myself as a worker and I felt it would make a good vocation. Those young people maybe have only done one thing wrong and yet they are labelled. People have a negative perception of them and they don't see the young person as an individual.

When you are working with and talking to the young people, do they say about the attitudes of older people and the fact that they feel they are being looked down on by them?

Yes.

Is that something that you think reinforces their behaviour?

I would say it does, yes. I know young people hanging about the street can engender fear in older people in the community, so you have to understand all aspects of what is happening in the community, but behaviour can reinforce stereotypes.

Having won the Woman of the Year title, what would you like to say to young people about playing a positive role in their communities instead of just trying to get away and escaping as it were.?

I just think this is really rewarding work and you have to enjoy what you are doing. It is challenging, but even though you have days when you feel you are banging your head off a wall, that you should stay positive and work to make a difference.