Vanessa, Rok and I sat around the table and ran through our presentation, our first public meeting was coming up in 5 days and we were slightly nervous, especially me!
After we finished our presentation dry run, we reviewed our FAQs and we discussed some of the answers which we had also incorporated from listening to Alpine Valley School podcasts and from our friends at Wicklow and Sligo Sudbury.
Our public meeting day finally arrived (Saturday 19th October) and I woke up asking myself why was I doing this again… ha! On a serious note, of course, I knew why we needed an Alternative School in our Community and therefore this needed to happen. Thankfully we had tremendous support with lots of texts and phone calls expressing well wishes and we also had Gayle from Sligo Sudbury School coming too so I kept reminding myself that this was going to go well.
And, I’m glad to report that the meeting went extremely well, we had a great turn out and everyone got involved in the Q&A session at the end. We all enjoyed Gayle’s presentation and the amazing pictures she shared of Sligo Sudbury School; this gave everyone a great insight into what North Dublin’s Democratic School could look like.
Our first public meeting was our first big milestone, and we realised that there was indeed a great interest for a Democratic School in North Dublin, so this gave us huge encouragement to continue with our endeavours.
Since our public meeting, we have welcomed another member Yvonne to our group and we are steadily progressing! Our next public meeting is scheduled for January 2020, the actual date to be confirmed soon. So please watch this space…
Best wishes, Lisa
Ps: we’d like to extend a special thanks Gayle Nagle (Sligo Sudbury School), Darragh O’Brien (Local TD) and, Alan Dunne (Head Librarian in Malahide)
North Dublin Democratic School 