The job that you are doing is about the business of creating a better world. An open world, a world free of homophobic bullying and bias. A world where people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, at whatever time of their lives they discover that about themselves that they can feel, ‘So what? So what? That’s the world. I live in a world where that’s everyday. Where nobody passes a remark on it. Nobody comments. This is how life is.’ I feel very strongly that what you are doing is such an important step by step by step growth, helping not just yourselves but actually at a much bigger level, helping all of us as community, as society, as Mums, dads, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, colleagues to one another to be a loving caring community. You’re helping us to grow and to go that journey.

So, thank you for your courage and thank you for going that journey and thank you in particular for growing that journey. Go raibh mile maith agat.
- President Mary McAleese. October 2008

Mike and Dani at the shOUT stand for the President’s visit.

In the past year shOUT! has seen many changes and has achieved so much.
From the first group of the year starting off with our new youth worker, Emma, the group was heading down a new and unknown road. At first the taughts were ‘she isnt Maria’ :) lol, but then she turned up with those lemon and poppy seed buns, yummy!!! she had us won over. What makes it better is that it wasn’t the only time we got to taste her and Maureen’s cooking.
During her time with shOUT! she had us climbing up the walls, in NUIG, which i loved.
She also got us being proactive and giving back to the community, by being one of the only groups in the country to acknowledge and celebrate IDAHO, international day against homophobia and transphobia.
We also drummed in dublin pride, galway pride and limerick pride parades, and also in the NOISE march for equality.
We made a promo video and pod cast with the help of spun out. We also attended the ‘Out on Film’ part of the Galway Film Fleadh 2009.
Also this year 4 of our members traveled to bundoran to an over 18s weekend orgunised Dundalk Out Comers. Sorry to the people who didnt get to go. but it was a good weekend.
Around this stage of the year Emma got her good news, that she had gotten her PHD course. Although great news for her, it wasnt so much for us, because it meant she would b leaving us :( The news though was made more positive when we met Emmas replacement Sara, who has continued to make shOUT! a fun and interesting place to go each and every week.

This past year also saw 3 out of 4 of our regular volunteers leaving us to go to bigger and better places. (Ye need to come back and visit people!!) In their place we now have Niamh and Paul :) So great to work with and determined to do what it takes to keep this group running and always make every1 feel welcome and get every1 involved each week.

Galway pride…what an event. For shOUT! this involved running our own pride events, an open samba lesson, a treasure hunt, drumming in the parade and then our drag show and youth disco. We had people down for Belong2 in dublin and my lgb in limerick, making for a memorable weekend. :D

I just want to say thanks to you all, friends old and new, for making this year such a good one.

and lets made next year even better!! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

We ended up being featured in a few of the media reports afterwards:
Herald AM:

We made the main evening news also: RTÉ Six One News (RealPlayer needed). Here’s an alternate link for the news feature, just skip forward to the 5:00min mark in the video (Flash Required): Six One News on the RTÉ iPLayer

And shOUT members in the front of this photo making the Irish Examiner and the Metro:

The wonderful Fionn Kidney snapped a fair few shots of the samba band too:

(more after the jump)

There’s a longer podcast interview on the SpunOut website too, which you can listen to by clicking on this link: SpunOut.ie LGBT podcast.

Congrats and well done to all the members of shOUT! who were involved in the video and the podcast, and thank you to SpunOut for asking us to be involved.

Congrats Davy and Meadhbh! You guys were fantastic. :)