Imoderate – Mercy Secondary School Ballymahon

Why as a team did you choose to focus on this challenge?

We chose to focus on this challenge because it’s not a topic that is talked about enough. When we went to people for advice, not many knew what hidden poverty meant. Hidden poverty is a huge problem in todays society, especially where we live. We are all surrounded by hidden poverty but nobody speaks about it. We are hopeful that we can come up with a big idea to try help it.

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What do you know now about the challenge that you didn't know before?

The first thing we found out is that people are ignorant to this topic. 70% of people how are expediting material deprivation are no classified as “as risk of poverty” by the ERSI. We found out that the people most at risk of poverty are single parents, people with disabilities and people who pay for rented accommodation .

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What have you learnt about your Hero?

Our hero is Harry Sandler Harry is currently 23 he’s from Australia when his parents divorced he became homeless since he was 17 he spent years Couch surfing and was in violent government housing other times he had previously registered a website and out of desperation he tried to get a refund it didn’t work so he tried hard to make the website work while going to school and he landed his first clients then took off he is now a multi millionaire

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If you could improve one thing for your Hero what would that be?

Well my hero is now pretty well off but he still has food insecurity from being homeless so I would offer links or resources to therapy to help him get over it

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Do you have any ideas for a potential solution? No matter how raw, share them with your Mentors for feedback.

Our idea is basically an app where there will be a podcast or something like that where people in hidden poverty share their story, there will be a section where volunteers can go shopping for people and a donation page there will be a community newsletter where it shows local charity events which will be organised by volunteers on this app. there will be a page with lots of links in to resources for people in these situations we will have a job is page and also a reward and raffle for any volunteers

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Ask your Mentor anything …. This is a chance to ask your Mentors a direct question relating to your Big Idea.

What do you like about our idea? what would you change about our idea? is there anything you don’t like about our idea? what is the experience of big idea like to you? do you like being a mentor? do you think we could win what is the least chosen challenge?