A young Naomh Éanna club-member fills out a NET Programme work-sheet while watching a video message from club senior footballer and hurler, Joe Maskey.
By John Harrington
The current lockdown caused by the Covid-19 health-crisis has had an impact on the emotional health of everyone in the country, regardless of age.
But perhaps its effect on the youngest of all in our society is sometimes overlooked moreso than on other age-groups because we mistakenly believe they don’t quite understand what’s happening, or we are reluctant to engage them on the topic.
The truth, though, is that our children take in far more than we sometimes appreciate, and it’s important we give them the tools to process that information in the best way possible and encourage them to express their emotions rather than bottle them up.
That’s one of the reasons why a recent initiative by the Naomh Éanna club in North Belfast is such a laudable one.
Pioneered by club-members Tierna Cunningham and Charlene Feeney, ‘The Net Programme – Naomh Éanna Together’, is a comprehensive resource for children aged eight years and older that helps them build emotional resilience, take pride in their club, embrace the GAA’s code of behaviour, and practice healthy eating and sleeping.
“Where our club is situated in North Belfast which is one of the worst hit areas by suicide in the whole of the north, especially by young men,” says Róisín O’Hare, who is a Naomh Éanna club member and Antrim GAA’s County Health and Wellbeing Chairperson, when explaining the context behind The NET Programme.
“Up until October or November it had been very much teenagers and young men, but we we recently had a very shocking incident up here when a wee boy who was only 11 years old took his own life. He wasn't a member of the club, but he lived in the general area and it affected everyone here.
“Both Tierna and Charlene have wee boys who are the same age so it would have resonated with them. They would have thought that we were very much looking at the mental health of young men and women but no-one was really doing anything in that space for younger children.
“People are a little bit reluctant to talk about those issues with younger children because of their perceived levels of understanding.
“So Tierna and Charlene came to me and asked would it be okay if they could look to develop a resilience programme for younger boys and girls.”
Naomh Éanna club-members and founders of the NET - Naomh Éanna Together - Progamme, Charlene Feeney (l) and Tierna Cunningham.
The NET Programme was originally designed to be delivered in a workshop-based setting that would involve senior club players working as mentors of the club’s juveniles.
The Covid-19 lockdown meant those plans had to be shelved, but Cunningham and Feeney quickly repurposed them to ensure The Net Project could still be rolled out at a time when a resilience programme for young members would be all the more valuable.
“When everything was shut down Tierna and Charlene got in touch with me and to see would alright if they could keep working on this and use it as something a bit different way to help kids with resilience training in the current shutdown,” says O’Hare.
“We're all worried about the current situation but sometimes children don't express how worried they are.
“Tierna and Charlene have done absolutely brilliant work. They've sourced information from different learning projects and emotional health projects and brought it all together into something unique. They've worked so hard on it, they really have.
“The original plan was that the boys and girls would see the players in person at the club if this had been rolled out as a normal programme.
“But instead they got the four senior players to make videos and one of them will be published every week. Joe Maskey's was published last week, Ciara McNulty, the captain of the ladies football team, will publish hers this week.
“They've thought of everything, they really have. There's colouring in, there's bingo, and all the rest of it. There are so many positive messages about not being down-hearted, and different tools for building resilience.
“It's been brilliant in recent weeks seeing the videos of boys and girls doing different skills online like 30 jab lifts in 30 seconds.
“But Tierna and Charlene were a wee bit concerned there might be children looking at those saying, 'Oh, I can't do that'.
“So that's why there's a wee bit in there about the power of 'yet'. You mightn't be able to do it yet, but practice, practice, practice, and you will do it.
“They've thought of everything. Tierna and Charlene are just absolutely brilliant. They're just dynamos within the club. They take something, they run with it, and you know they're just going to do an absolutely brilliant job.”
Antrim GAA hope that other clubs in their county and nationwide can take a look at ‘The NET Programme’, and adapt it for their own club.
An outline of the ‘The NET Programme’ can be downloaded below.