Shauna McClenaghan put on the spot by Allen Meagher

The interview took place in Connemara Community Radio studio in Letterfrack as an international group of community workers gathered outside waiting for Shauna to take them hillwalking. No pressure! Click here To watch the full interview on Changing Ireland’s YouTube channel.

What’s the last book you read?
‘Create Your Best Life’, which was written by a friend of mine in Dublin, Val Quinn. It is about people making changes in their lives; a lot of it is about retiring and stuff like that. It’s available on Amazon and donations from the book are going towards Irish Guide Dogs.

So what are you hoping to change this year in your life?
To have a better work life balance.

Outside of family name two heroes of yours.
Recently I had the privilege of being at a conference and meeting with Bernadette McAliskey and she was really empowering. Michael D Higgins is the other. I think that he hasn’t lost his touch with reality in his position and he’s made some really good points. His position around Gaza is really admirable as well.

Name one issue that was dominant 10 years ago that isn’t an issue anymore.
Early school leaving.

Can you name two or three issues in Ireland today that you think are the most serious?
Firstly housing – especially in Inishowen where we have the defective concrete block crisis. It’s absolutely huge, it’s having a significant impact across families and our community. Housing in general across the country is a massive issue and needs to be addressed immediately.

Secondly emigration – as in people leaving our county and country. I’m not concerned about them coming in, I think we need them and that diversity is only making our society a better place. Emigration of our young people out of the area is a big issue. And it’s not only young people – it’s middle-aged people as well, to support their families. You have a lot of people living in single parent families because their partners are away. So there’s different dynamics of families with that going on.

It’s very common in Inishowen and many remote parts of Ireland – we’re not as commutable as other places. We probably had one of the most sophisticated rail systems way back in the 1940s and 50s, but we’ve lost all that. We don’t have a motorway. We don’t have rail.

A third issue has been there for a long time and is still there – patriarchy. In the local elections we had three women (elected) across the whole of the council – 37 councillors in all of Donegal and only three are women.

How about in the community sector? I would imagine in the future the majority of managers and coordinators will be women.
There is a shift; I was at the ILDN (Irish Local Development Network) meeting last week in Wicklow, and it was funny to see that shift. I’ve been a manager or CEO since 2002, so I’ve been going to those meetings for a long time, and it is much more balanced now.

We did some work recently around supporting women into the trades and it was really good to see young women going into the electrical trade. It’s that thing about ‘see it to be it’.

However, in (community and voluntary) sector it’s now predominantly women that I’m seeing coming forward. Even in our workforce it’s predominantly women and that’s not good. We need to have balance.

Have you any advice for anyone starting off in Community Development?
Be true to yourself and don’t let it be about you, it has to be about your community. If it’s about you, you’re on a losing game, you can’t be egotistical in this world (of community development).

What work would you be collectively proud of in Inishowen?
Our peace and conflict work is important because we’ve always been seen as that neutral trusted space because we’re across the border. In all of our work we must realise we have a lot more similarities than we have differences.

One of the things at the moment I’m really proud of is having community facilitation around the defective concrete block crisis. It’s about building community resilience. We have an inter-agency subgroup that looks at what supports are needed within school settings. Children were drawing houses falling down. It is affecting children at that young age. Your home is supposed to be a safe place and it’s not for so many families. So (it’s about) being able to support children to have something outside of that and to bring them to a safe space. We have supported summer camps, places in summer camps with the community groups. This is all done in collaboration with local community groups.

We’ve done a resilience building programme in conjunction with the local Cooperative Society, (they) have given us funding to support
the facilitators. It’s about resilience building in schools and giving children the tools to converse about what their issues are.

You came out with the phrase“serendipity management” at the North Atlantic Conference. What does that mean?
Serendipity is when things happen spontaneously or for a reason, when the universe comes together, so it’s about joining the dots. You see opportunities in different parts of your work and you join them together. There’s so many people working in silos and it could be done a lot better if there was more collaboration.

Give us the Bord Fáilte Inishowen bit now, why should we all go to Inishowen?
It’s special. The fact that it’s a peninsula is great actually for us in our work because we’ve got a confined space, one that’s beautiful. The people are really special. It’s got a really good sense of identity, the music culture is really strong. They’re making their name in the film industry now, it’s got a lot of potential.

There are a lot of really creative people – good people and resilient people, because they’ve been living in a border area as well so they’ve seen that. People who have had to do things for themselves, because we’re so peripheral.