Former Derry City player Donal O’Brien has new goals in sight - and his aim has been sharpened by three years study at the University of Ulster’s Magee campus.
Donal is among 20 students who received a Diploma of Higher Education in Community Youth Work at a special ceremony in Magee today, the first time that professional academic awards in the sector have been made at the campus. “It is an award which I hope will make me a more reflective and a more effective practitioner,” Donal said. He works with Extern West, which for 22 years has assisted Social Services in providing support for young people who are perceived as being at risk.
Even before joining Derry City as a midfielder and forward in 1991, Donal had witnessed the pressures that young people in deprived environments experience. A Dublin “Northsider”, he had witnessed the ravages caused by heroin in depressed north inner city communities. As a teenager in the 1980s, he played football with friends whose brothers and sisters were dying of drug addiction. He saw too how areas were stigmatised and young futures blighted through poverty and crime.
While with Derry City, he did voluntary work as a sports activities co-ordinator with the local YMCA and when he left the club in 1995 became more closely involved in working with the city’s youth, from both sides of the community.
“Now that Derry has moved away from the old days of the troubles, it is starting to experience other downside factors. For example, crime has increased. For some young people, poverty, negative peer influence, drug and alcohol misuse, inconsistent or poor parenting are some of the factors which lead to young people getting involved in offending behaviour which puts them at risk. These young people need support throughout these difficult times. You can never have enough youth workers and social workers.”
Donal (37), who lives with his wife, Sinead, at Umerican near Buncrana, Co Donegal, says the support of Magee staff and his classmates helped him overcome early anxiety about starting studying for the first time since leaving school at 17. “I hope Magee introduces a Community Youth Work degree – sooner rather than later. It is badly needed and I would certainly want to apply to do it.”
