Discovery College West 

Recovery Education and engagement initiatives have been active all over Ireland for many years. As part of this programming, co productions and workshops were held for community members to support the mission of recovery education in Roscommon and East Galway. While recovery education initiatives reached a wide population and has made incredible impacts to personal and community recovery, a gap still existed around the needs of young people. 

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Feedback from young participants revealed that while recovery education programs were covering topics interesting to them, not everything in the workshops was relevant to their lives. Young people experience particular and unique challenges and also harbor specific strengths when it comes to recovery education. We wanted to ensure that we were capturing young people's experiences, harnessing their strengths and accessing their unique potential to co produce and facilitate education programming beneficial to them. 

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And so the Discovery College was born! 

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​ Discovery College West, which is the first of its kind in Ireland, introduces a brand-new 
recovery focussed way of learning, where workshops are created and facilitated by young 
people who have lived experience of mental health difficulties, family members of those 
who use the services, and mental health professionals from CAMHS, AMHS and and other mental health services. All aspects of the Discovery College take place in a relaxed peer supported environment where 
everyone is equal, and all contributions are respected. As the workshops promote group 
interaction and are experiential, participants learn not only from the facilitators, but also 
one another.

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We have explored and scoped local interest, appetite and need across various community and service settings. Workshops take place in community facilities, CAMHS, schools, youth organisations, and the prison service. Our community facilitators delivered Discovery College West workshops since its inception, with most co-facilitating more than one, and each lasting two-hours in duration. The workshops were educational with an adult education/ self- directed learning style-based approach. They were designed to be deliverable either as stand-alone, one-off workshops, or as a series delivered over a period.

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​For more information on Discovery College West's development and impact, click the link below to read the full report.