Pictured are a number of Respond students who just graduated from the recently completed HETAC Level 6, Community Studies Programme, held at our new ‘hub of education’ in the Southern Region Johns College, Waterford

Respond has always placed a strong emphasis on education as a means for social change and personal growth. We seek to unfold education’s full emancipatory potential to break the cycle of poverty, disadvantage and exclusion: to enable social integration. In our view education is centrally important and can become a vehicle toward individual human flourishing, and then enable participants to contribute to the development of thriving communities.

Our Community Studies Programme reflects this ethos. We come together as a community of learners, both teachers and students, so that we can work together to study society and community life, we seek to reflect critically upon the contemporary world, so that we can make a positive impact and help transform it.

Establishing strong relationships between teachers and students is key to our approach. It is both and individual and collective process of shared learning, where we all improve our capabilities to have a positive influence in our communities.

Posted: May 2016