Craigavon man once at risk of street life is now community leader helping others find path out of social exclusion
At 12 years old Barry McCrory was at risk of slipping into the trap of social exclusion and falling prey to gangs involved in anti-social behaviour in his home town of Craigavon.
Today he stands as a testimony to a moment of care which saw him turn away from the risks of life on street corners, to being a community leader with a university degree and his feet firmly on the ground.
Now aged 30, he is Chairperson of Drumgor Detached Youth which not only pulled him off the streets but has received almost £800,000 of National Lottery funding over the years to support young people like him in his area.
And today as the National Lottery marks its 30th anniversary, Barry says that funding is vital now more than ever, to keep project services going.
He said: “Drumgor Detached Youth Work Project was set up in 1998 to tackle the social exclusion of young people in the Brownlow area of the Co Armagh town.
“It offered the break I needed. We were bored and frustrated at the lack of opportunities available to young people my age and were hanging out on street corners just passing time.
“But we were approached by youth workers from the project and invited to take part in some of its programmes. It’s incredible to realise that 18 years later we're still here and doing incredible work with the backing of the National Lottery and the community.”
And what started as Barry and his pals being taught first aid, giving them a life skill they had never thought about before, has now gone full circle.
Barry said: “Looking back, we weren’t bad kids at all, just bored when we were first approached by Drumgor Detached Youth.
“We weren’t involved with high-risk activities at the time, although some kids were. There was nothing for us to do really, so when the youth workers from Drumgor approached us, it was more to do with engagement and social inclusion than stopping us going down the wrong road.
“The first programme we did, Heart Start, was a six-week course that showed us what to do if someone had a drug overdose or became endangered on the streets, so that was really useful.”
Barry stayed on with the project through most of his teens, participating in panels and projects, cross-community residentials and team-building activities.
And when the chance came up to return as an adult to lend his expertise, Barry jumped at the chance and now he is the chairman of Drumgor Detached Youth, which recently expanded its reach into north Lurgan as well.
Through Drumgor Detached Youth Barry and his friends took part in a wide range of programmes, covering issues like alcohol and drug abuse and healthy relationships.
Coming from a Catholic part of the town, he attended his first-ever cross-community residential with young Protestants and made a video for teenagers highlighting key risk areas for his peers.
When he was just 16, Barry headed up an electronic newsletter which helped 200 young people and provided them with information on the risks of drink and drug abuse.
In recognition of the role he played at Drumgor and the hard work and dedication, Barry was honoured at the Daily Mirror Pride of Northern Ireland awards in 2011.
At an event in Stormont, Barry was Highly Commended in the Young Campaigner category, sponsored by the then, Big Lottery Fund - now National Lottery Community Fund - an award of which he was justifiably proud.
He said: “I was delighted and very appreciative to have been Highly Commended at the Pride of Northern Ireland Awards.
“I had helped create this electronic newsletter which went out monthly to schools, telling them stories about people who had turned their lives around, signposting them to services that helped with addiction and raising awareness of what we did at Drumgor.
“We also gave printed-out newsletters to the detached youth workers so they could hand them out to young people in the street.”
The newsletter was hugely successful, and Barry received great feedback about it, not just in terms of his Pride of Northern Ireland award, but from his peers as well.
“This was back before social media was as popular as it is now and we needed a way of communicating with our peers in a young person-friendly way and in a language they understood,” he said.
During his teens, opportunities came Barry’s way which he could never have imagined.
He became part of NICCY, a youth advisory panel to the Children’s Commissioner at the time, Patricia Lewsley-Mooney. He travelled to Paris, interviewed politicians and presented to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Sitting on the NICCY panel and conducting interviews gave him an insight into the world of human resources, so he decided to study that as a subject at the Ulster University.
Barry explained: “When I went to university, I’d stepped away from Drumgor and was no longer a service user but in 2019, I was asked back by the committee members to provide expertise around human resources and governance,” says Barry.
“Then in 2020, I was appointed chair of the project. Drumgor made such a difference to my life, so I’m delighted to be able to give something back.”
Drumgor Detached Youth, which has an office in Craigavon, aims to empower young people in their community through youth advocacy, youth work and social action projects.
Through personalised support, community outreach and hands-on engagement, they seek to address the diverse needs and aspirations of young people, ultimately fostering their personal growth, resilience and active participation in a disenfranchised society and in areas of high levels of deprivation, anti-social behaviour and unemployment.
With hundreds of thousands of pounds in support funding from the National Lottery, Barry’s work with the team is now viewed as a community standard of exceptional value.
He said: “We’re all very aware of the cuts across the community and voluntary sectors, so having this funding from the National Lottery is a massive deal for us.
“Having that funding means long term stability for us and being able to employ a new youth advisory worker.
“Part of the funding will go towards social action projects and means we can continue to engage with those kids who are most marginalised and at risk.”
The young people Drumgor Detached Youth deal with are aged between 11 and 25 and are mainly male, although the service does have female users too.
Projects include a North Lurgan safe space group for 16 plus males, a girls’ group called Empower Her, a schools’ programme where a team of youth workers go into Lismore College, Craigavon and St Ronan’s College, Lurgan, to speak to pupils and a young men’s group in Lurgan who have been engaging in positive interactions with the community.
A major area of concern for Drumgor’s youth workers is anti-social behaviour, but the project strives to combat that through positivity and peer support.
Barry explained: “Young people are so often seen through a negative lens. Here at Drumgor, we proactively engage with them to offer guidance and positive role models, to steer them away from negative behaviours.”
And having staff members within the project who were previous service users and whose lives were turned around by their involvement with Drumgor, has made all the difference.
Barry said: “We can have those positive conversations because we were there once, we wore the T-shirts and we were on the same journey.
“We don’t want to see young people dealt with through the justice system or labelled so that they have limited opportunities as a result.
“At Drumgor, we look at relationship building, the reasons for anti-social behaviour, lack of opportunities and social exclusion and we collaborate with other agencies to address those issues.”
“Thanks to the funding from the National Lottery, we can carry on with our important work and just keep getting stronger.”
Since the first National Lottery draw in 1994, thanks to those who play the games and raise over £30 million for good causes each week, £786 million has been awarded to good causes in communities across Northern Ireland over this time.
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