Hi everyone,

I have returned after a busy winter hiatus!

What have I done in the last six weeks?

-Visited Italy… And Donegal (An even more foreign land to me).

-Eaten a lot of food.

-Spent a lovely New Years catching up with my friends in Galway.

-Hit my 300th follower on Twitter!

-Interviewed students volunteers for ALIVE, NUI Galway’s volunteer programme (I might give you sneak peak at the result sometime soon).

-Kicked off the promotion of NUIG Italian Society’s upcoming Masquerade Ball.

-And joined YMIP, a new 32-county EM Ireland initiative that has recruited 25 young people to act as citizen journalists and cover the Irish Presidency from January to June 2013.

How cool is that?

You mightn’t have guessed from the particular content of this blog, but I’ve actually had an interest in politics and current affairs since before I started writing. So when I read that European Movement Ireland were launching a programme giving young would-be journalists a chance to report on Ireland’s Presidency of the EU, I knew without a doubt that I couldn’t let the opportunity slip by.

I didn’t succeed in getting a spot on the programme at first. Apparently there were over 150 applications from young people all over Ireland. I was really disappointed and wondered whether it was a sign that I’m not meant for political journalism. However, the weekend before I was due back in college, I got a missed call from a Dublin phone number. It turned out that one of the chosen participants had dropped out, and as I was on the reserve list, they offered me the place instead!

Over-joyed was not even the word.

(But here’s wishing the best to whoever had to turn down the opportunity.)

Training took place that week, followed by our first event, Launch of the European Year of Citizens and the Citizens Dialogue in Dublin City Hall. I felt slightly over-whelmed by the depth and breadth of information at the training, and by the obvious experience and enthusiasm of my fellow participants. But everyone was very nice and very welcoming, and once we arrived at the event itself, I felt confident that I would be able to do a great job of covering the Irish Presidency, and in such a way that it would appeal to other people my age.

I would love to part of an initiative to get them interested and up to date with the undertakings of the Irish Presidency and what it means for Ireland, and to give a voice to those who believe they have something to contribute to these discussions on a political and public level.

The thought of working this experience into my blogging project is really exciting. It will get me out of my comfort zone in Galway and back to the root of why I write and what I hope to achieve by it.

I will be covering approximately one event a month until the end of June, when Ireland are handing the Presidency over to Lithuania. My first article on the youth perspective of the Citizens’ Dialogue in Dublin will be published here in the coming days… Watch this space!

And I will be writing more than just this, of course. You’ll still be getting my regular articles for SIN and a couple more surprise opinion pieces along the way (The surprise is that I’m not even sure what they’ll be about yet.)

Stay tuned 🙂

Isabella x

For more information on YMIP and the Irish Presidency, visit http://www.europeanmovement.ie/