Siobhán scoops scholarship award for non-profit work

A WEST Clare social justice and equality campaigner has been rewarded for contributing to various non-profit making organisations over a 20-year period.

Siobhán O’Donoghue scooped the prestigious Captain Cathal Ryan Scholarship Award worth up to €25,000 at an official ceremony in Dublin on Wednesday. She received the award in recognition of her work as the director of the Migrant Rights Centre, Ireland since 2002, as well as her involvement in the establishment of Claiming Our Future, a social movement calling for an equal and sustainable Ireland. This scholarship fund can be used by Siobhán for personal or professional development over the next year.
The Captain Cathal Ryan Scholarship Award was established in 2008 to celebrate outstanding emerging or established social entrepreneurs, or non-profit leaders in Ireland.
Previous recipients include Seán Coughlan, CEO of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland; Michael Barron, director of BeLonGTo youth services and Krystian Fikert, chief executive of MyMind.org.
Presenting the award, Cillian Ryan, son of the late Captain Cathal Ryan, said, “We are delighted to honour Siobhán for her outstanding track record in relation to equality in Ireland over the past 20 years in the areas of women’s issues, Traveller, migrant issues and political reform.
“Siobhán has shown tremendous leadership in the area of social innovation and I hope this scholarship will allow her to further her development as an emerging leader in this sector,” he said.
Ms O’Donoghue told The Clare Champion it is a huge honour to receive the award, which would help her develop her work in social and economic justice.
“For me, leadership is not about personal and individual enhancement but about contributing wholeheartedly and working collectively to making society a better place. Over the years, I have gained hugely from the leadership shown by so many people in so many different ways,” she said.
She has followed in the footsteps of her mother, Lily, who works with the Clare Local Development Company in Kilkee. In fact, she credits her parents, Lily and her late father, Patsy, who died suddenly last year, as the inspiration for her career.
“My parents always encouraged me to make a contribution to society and to advocate for the rights of others. They always supported me when I wanted to take risks. Lily taught me to question everything and to reach for what seemed to be the impossible,” she said.
The 44-year-old mother-of-two was born in Manchester but moved to Kilmurry McMahon when she was four and attended Cranny National School and the Convent of Mercy, Kilrush.
Despite training as a nurse, she left Tralee General Hospital to pursue her real passion – social issues and community work.
Her one-year stint in the Clare Youth Service in late 1990 fostered a yearning for more and she qualified as a professional community worker from NUI Maynooth in 1993 and went on to set up the Limerick Travellers’ Development Group, which was the first of its kind.
She left this group in 1997 to join the Community Workers’ Co-operative in Galway, which is a national organisation helping the marginalised deal with equality issues, and was a member of Community Platform, a national umbrella group advocating anti-poverty measures and social inclusion.
She was one of the lead negotiators for this platform during the social partnership talks in the late ’90s and was also a member of the National Economic and Social Council.
In 2002, she was appointed director of the Migrants Rights Centre, which campaigns for rights to help the undocumented.
Her experience spans equality issues, anti-racism, gender equality, labour market and economic policy, migration policy, anti-poverty, community work and advocacy/campaigning at a local, national and global level.
She has been involved in the development of National Equality Proofing Guidelines, the design of RAPID, the design and implementation of the Women’s Education Initiative, National Development Plan Monitoring Committees, the Social Inclusion Working Group of the National Action Plan Against Racism and the Board of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism.
She was the Irish representative on the board of the European Network Against Racism and remains actively involved in ENAR Ireland. She is the current chairperson of the Community Workers’ Coop, a member of the Irish Social Science Platform’s Advisory Group and was recently appointed a member of the Board of the National Women’s Council of Ireland.
Now living in Dublin with her partner, Stephen O’Brien and children, seven-year-old Luke and four-year-old Faye, Siobhán is the author of Private Homes – A Public Concern, a report detailing the experiences of migrant women employed in the private home; co-author of Accessing Redress for Exploitation: The Experiences of Migrant Workers; has contributed to several publications, reports and websites and is a regular media spokesperson on social and economic justice issues.