Ulster Bank announce its new three year partnership with Young Social Innovators (YSI)

Members News - Jan 27, 2016

On 20th January Ulster Bank announced its new three year partnership with Young Social Innovators (YSI). The lively event in Chq, Dublin featured a keynote address from An Taoiseach together with guest speakers Baroness Thornton of the Young Foundation and Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, co-founder of YSI.

Young Social Innovators is the biggest civic and social innovation programme in Ireland. Educating and engaging young people in the theory and practice of social innovation whilst challenging them to creatively tackle the social issues facing them locally, nationally and globally. Since its launch in 2002, over 100,000 students have participated in the programme tackling a wide range of social issues. A record breaking 444 innovation projects have been entered into this year’s Young Social Innovators of the Year Awards by over 6,500 students nationwide, an increase of 8% from 2015.

The new relationship will see Ulster Bank providing financial support to YSI and its participants, ensuring that social innovation in Ireland continues to be fostered from a young age. For the past 10 years Ulster Bank has focused on investing in financial education, entrepreneurship and skills-building programmes for young people. This relationship builds on its strong community legacy of education whilst at the same time helps reposition Ulster Bank as future-focused and supporting social innovation – a force that’s set to drive Ireland’s growth and inclusive economic recovery.

At the launch Paul Stanley said, Ulster Bank is proud to be embarking on this new partnership with YSI, an organisation that over the last 15 years has shown that the future of our society can be shaped through questioning the status quo and education. We share a goal with YSI to enable growth through innovation, whether it is support for our business customers or for the communities where we live and work, in what matters to them. The work we do with YSI will strengthen the development of social initiatives that are important to young people and deliver positive change in our country for our citizens.”

To see what these fearless young social innovators are working on take a look at our video

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