CAIM Empowers Youth Projects

European Soldarity Corps Project CarersConnected

CarersConnected is a project is targeted for young carers and young adult carers, CarersConnected has been running successfully throughout 2025, the aims for the project are to raise huge awareness on the care-giving role that young people carry out, ensuring that we create an environment that the young people feel safe, respected and valued in and overall improving the lives of the young people. The European Solidarity Corps Project CarersConnected is also in place to reduce the feeling of social isolation

The young people would meet every Tuesday evening from 6.45-7.45 for young carers in Senior Cycle including those who are in transition year and from 7.45-8.45 for young adult carers. On the online calls we would do a range of diverse activities such as art, educational games such as kahoot or blooket and much more!. The young people also pop on for a chat :). The group aims to meet up quarterly for events to which they are funded.

Please see this link for access to the CarersEmpowered Portal, here you will find basic first aids, accessible cooking recipes, news regarding events and fact and resources for young carers -

https://www.carersempowered.com/

Tiktoks of activties

CarersConnected Fabulous Creative pieces

Neurodiversity means every one of us, we are each unique so all of our brains are different, that connects us as human beings. Some people ware consider Neurotypical (often rudely referred to as 'normal) and some people are diagnosed with conditions and disabilities that are called Neurodivergence - often people with these conditions are not treated equally and they are sometimes even treated as stupid, weird, odd, and are excluded from society in lots of ways because of this. Every member of our project group finds this upsetting, particularly as we are all Neurodivergent ourselves.

Some humans are Neurotypical and some of us are Neurodivergent, all of us are unique and we believe we are all equals, and think it is important to make sure people who are Neurodivergent are included, valued, celebrated and seen as equal by everyone.

This summer many of the project team members were involved in a SUMMER ART FEST in County Cavan that was specifically run for Autistic young people, some of our project team were participants and some were facilitators. SUMMER ARTS FEST project was funded by an EU micro-grant and opened our eyes to the opportunities for funding in the EU that is not easy to obtain in Ireland. We want to set up our own social club that predominantly includes Neurodivergent people also interacting with Neurotypical people.

The group meet in VR Spaces, Online groups and also once a month we will have in person activities. VROIGE - (that is the VR part of Foroige) have donated some VR Headsets to loan for a year and possibly more if the project takes off. VROIGE currently only can support people up to age 18 but recognise the need for supporting young/emerging adults too.

Many of the older participants in the SUMMER ART FEST were young adults who had left school and had a very limited social life, they seem very sad about this and spoke of loneliness, social isolation, feeling excluded and even self harm and suicide idealisation. One of the autistic young people in this group recently got a tattoo all about suicide in men and the need to help people who feel like dying in this way.

Autistic people are 7 times more likely to attempt suicide, this is a terrifying and cruel statistic that can easily be reduced - https://www.autistica.org.uk/what-is-autism/suicide-and-autism

Our group was formed to do several things:

- Create better social inclusion for Neurodivergent Autistic young adults (everyone in our project group is Neurodivergent in different ways)

- Reduce the feelings of loneliness and isolation for the Neurodivergent, most specifically Autistic, young adults we know

- Raise awareness about how we can all support and include Neurodivergent people

European Solidarity Corps Project

Neurodiversity Connects