Why we exist

When we first established CAIM Empowers in 2024 our goal was to run a Neurodiversity Consultancy, however when I ( Faye ) had the opportunity that same year to engage in a variety of Youth focused Eu training and engagement opportunities, I saw the potential for achieving so much more, so we decided to expand the remit of CAIM Empowers, to use mine and my husband, Mick’s skill set to really make an impact in driving social change and meaningful inclusion across a variety of groups of marginalised, often written off groups of people

Mick and I have both been volunteering with young people in various capacities for over 30 years in Ireland the UK, and USA, this includes youth club leaders ( Foroige / Arch ) and assistants, sports coaching, scouts mentoring and the biggest experience of all - parenting three different children towards adulthood. We also subcontract a number of facilitators who are highly qualified, experienced and skills in the work we do, matching the right person to the right project.

In our parenting role we navigated a lot more bumps in the road than most parents do (see below). In 2014 I decided to leave the financial sector and go back to community work - my passion, and there I have spent over 10 years growing my skills and experience in the sector, and hopefully making a positive difference along the way. Bringing with me the skills I gained in the financial sector, designing and delivering training programs, coaching, and CSR projects, and being responsible for departmental governance, audit and compliance.

I took the skill set and experience I had, and added to it by going back to college in 2020, I was delighted to be awarded the Giancarlo Ramaioli Scholarship to study a Masters degree in Social Justice and Public Policy, this gave me the skillset and knowledge I needed to take my commitment to driving social change to the next level. It is in those studies that my research focused on Youth, and understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences and Trauma on youth development, and also understanding how this can drive early school leaving, disenfranchisement, Anti Social Behaviours and even criminality. I am passionate about responding restoratively to such experiences, and never seeing anyone as ‘written off’. I am trained in Restorative Practices and sit on the Restorative Practices Ireland research committee.

Having a wide variety of experiences in the community sector working for local social justice charities and community development organisations, as well as youth roles in Foroige, MSLETB, and the ETBI, I realised the most impact I could make was setting up a consultancy where I could work directly and independently with various organisations with the same goals - equality, fairness, and improved life chances for all.

Mick, who is the Director of Administration of CAIM Empowers was a Senior Program Manager in the financial sector, overseeing and managing many high level projects, he recently took early retirement to focus on growing CAIM Empowers. He has vast experience in project and program management, change management, budgeting, and reporting. He also makes a great cuppa, so he has taken on the additional role of refreshments manager - our daughter, Erin makes the biscuits.

CAIM Empowers is a private limited company and that is because we need to pay our bills, we aim to keep our fees to a minimum whilst paying fair wages to our facilitators, and we also have a ‘community commitment’ which means:

We are committed to spending at least 25% of our CAIM working time and experiences to voluntary work, working with charity/community organisations and directly with young people and families.

  • We will never charge a young person or parent directly for our services, we instead work with organisations to access various funding opportunities for what we do.

  • We help connect organisations to volunteers who can help achieve their mission.

  • We offer a free grant writing service that works with organisations to help design programs that will work with CAIM Empowers to meet their goals, and support them to write within grant/funding application parameters - if the organisation isn’t successful in their grant application, CAIM Empowers don’t have any financial gain, so the client organisation does not lose out for an unsuccessful funding application.

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