It's Your Right: Albha Foley (19) - Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

Albha Foley (19) is a recent addition to the Youth Advisory Panel. After just finishing his Leaving Certificate, Albha decided to taking a year out to immerse himself in some volunteer work and think about what he wants to do with his future. Albha admires the work that Jigsaw and the YAP do, and took this year as an opportunity to volunteer with them.

Albha believes that a healthy body equals a healthy mind, and so during his gap year, he has taken an interest into sports and recreation. Another passion of Albha's is cooking, and he had previously dreamed of being a chef. Unfortunately, an accident left him with a serious arm injury and unable to cook for a number of years making his dream of becoming a chef seem less likely. But thankfully during his gap year, with dedicated physiotherapy, he has started again, and cooks every day for his family.

The most important thing to Albha is that he is happy with whatever he decides to do in the future, whether that be to continue with social/community work, sports, or hopefully one day more cooking.

Jigsaw is a network of programmes across Ireland designed to make sure every young person has somewhere to turn to and someone to talk to. They provide confidental support to young people in their local area. http://headstrong.ie/jigsaw/

The Youth Advisory Panel is a group of dedicated young people who advise Jigsaw on the opinions and issues of young people, as well as helping the organisation raise awareness of mental health.

Headstrong is the National Centre for Youth Mental Health - a non-profit organisation supporting young people's mental health in Ireland.

http://headstrong.ie/

Listen to Joseph Duffy, CEO of Headstrong on 10 years of the Ombudsman for Children's Office and what it means for an organisation like Headstrong.

https://audioboo.fm/boos/2147991-seen-and-heard-joseph-duffy-on-the-ombudsman-for-children-s-office

For more information on Children's Rights and the 'Its Your Right' campaign, visit the Its Your Right website:

http://itsyourright.ie/

Accompanying Music: 'Progression' by Michael Gallen © West Pole Music and Management Ltd.

See below for transcript of Albha's story.

00:00 Music.

My name is Albha Foley, I’m 19 and I live in Blennerville. I just finished my Leaving Cert last year and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in college. I didn’t wanna rush into it cos a lot of people I know rushed into it and made the wrong choice saying it’s a lot of money and effort to be putting into something you don’t want to do. So I took a gap year to figure out what I want to do in college or as a career. 00:30 Albha; One of things I did was volunteer and work experience to try and get a feel for different careers. Basically YAP meets every 2 weeks or a week if there’s a lot of work needed, and we just try and raise awareness about mental health. We’re just out there making ourselves known that we’re here to get people to talk about their problems so it doesn’t get to a serious point, you know, if problems are talked about sooner, they can be resolved sooner. If the message wasn’t spread about mental health, there’d be a lot more, you know, problems 01:00 Albha; . But I think the numbers have come down and I think it is due to a lot of the work that Jigsaw and Headstrong do like, youth and community work in schools and awareness campaigns. As a young person, you want to make sure other young people are in a good state of mind and they’re enjoying their lives. So it’s kinda our responsibility to help others, especially if you’ve been through similar things to them like stress of school. A lot of what we aim at is the people in school doing exams and the stress that comes with that.
01:30 Albha; Most of us will do exams in our life and you know that’s stress so you wanna make sure that people are going through it okay, that they’re not suffering because of it. A lot of people have this thing where if you don’t go to college, you’re not successful, and that’s a huge stress on people, to get the points. As long as you try your best, and I suppose, just coming off the back of exams, you know that your life isn’t made or broken by the Leaving Cert and there’s more important things than exams so I suppose that’s why I wanted to be that kind of voice for the YAP. 02:00 Albha; 'Cos the other YAP members are still in school or in college, there’s no one kind of in the middle, so I guess I wanted to be that voice. I actually got into sports a lot in my GAP year and the healthy body, healthy mind kind of thing because it’s well known that if you’re doing sports or exercise on a regular basis and eating well, that it’s good for your mind as well...the endorphins it releases, just being healthy is good for your wellbeing. 02:30 Albha; Right now, I’m looking into doing sports next year but I just want to find what I love, if that’s what I love that’s good but if it’s not, I’m willing to take another year or two to find out what it is. I don’t mind if I was a mature student as long as I was doing something that I love doing, as in whatever that is in the future, if it’s social work, if it’s sport, as long as I’m happy that what’s important. 03:09 ENDS.