Wexford Local Development

Julia Syrotenko, Community Integration Worker with Wexford Local Development, came up with a novel way of helping her fellow Ukrainians to improve their English. Her Walk and Talk initiative has been a huge success in Gorey and surrounding areas. Together with a group of Irish volunteers, the Ukrainian refugees currently living in Wexford take part in weekly walks, which helps them to make new friends while practising their conversational English in a relaxed setting.

In Wexford - as  featured in our long read here -  community workers under SICAP made people welcome during a pandemic. The same good community work is happening across the country, from Inchicore to West Mayo. It is but one of many #SicapStories. It would make for an ideal television series, as amateur film-makers are proving.

At a Wexford Local Development event that aimed ‘to examine the local context 100 years after women were given the right to vote,’ issues of gender equality in politics, education and daily life were raised.

If expectations in Wexford are replicated in other counties, there could be a surge in the number of women elected as local councillors.