Lifestart - Mercy in Action

Introduction

My name is Sister Dolores McGuiness and I am a Sister of Mercy and a Founding Member of the Lifestart growing child programme.

I am now retired but I wanted to share the story of Lifestart which began in Derry in 1987 with a small group and an idea.

The beginning

In 1987, a small group of us gathered in Derry with no concrete plans, no assets, and nothing to manage but an emerging dream. We called ourselves an ‘Inspirational Committee’, united by a singular question: how could we enrich the most formative years of a child’s life, from birth to age five?

When the poet Brendan Kennelly launched our initiative, he captured our essence beautifully. He spoke of times gone by when a worker would approach a construction site foreman asking for “a start”. To get a start wasn’t just about securing a wage; it was about being handed a foundation built on values, direction, and future possibilities. That was exactly what we wanted to give young children: a sound start!

The gift of ‘The Growing Child’

The backbone of our curriculum arrived as a gift. Dennis Dunn, an author and friend of one of our founders, generously handed over the copyright for The Growing Child. These materials outlined child development month-by-month, focusing on the precise stimuli needed to nurture a child holistically. In Month 20, for instance, we guided parents to refine their approach to discipline using five simple rules: structure, positivity, specificity, consistency, and rewarding good behaviour.

By Month 55, we urged them to introduce water activities, letting their child explore the wonders of water to lay the groundwork for future science and math skills.

Every six months, parents would check their toddler’s motor, vision, communication, social, and emotional milestones, enabling them to catch and address developmental delays early.

The home as classroom

We chose the home as our classroom. By centring the programme in the living room rather than a community centre, the entire family system was drawn in.

If a family visitor knocked on the door and was told, “She’s not in,” we would simply smile at the father and say, “Sure, it’s great you’re in yourself!”

As we grew, we invested heavily in the quiet, unglamorous work of building a Lifestart Foundation - drafting a constitution, securing charitable status, navigating employment laws, writing training manuals and acquiring accreditation. This rigorous groundwork gave us the infrastructure to say “yes” when requests for help began trickling in from other counties and countries far beyond Derry and Connamara. It also gave us the confidence to stand before government departments and funders to lobby for our cause.

Sisters of Mercy and Jesuits as first founders

In those early days, long before we had “proven” our model, the Sisters of Mercy in Derry and the Jesuits in Galway stepped forward as our first funders. They invested generously in our dreams and possibilities. Years later, funding from Atlantic Philanthropies allowed us to hire Queen’s University, Belfast, to conduct a rigorous, longitudinal evaluation that officially proved the systemic change we were achieving (2014).

Our growth coincided with an historic turning point for Northern Ireland: the Peace Talks. We sat down with John Hume and quickly convinced him of a simple truth - that the family must be at the very heart of any vision for lasting peace. During a visit to Strasbourg, we secured a spot in what became known as the “Peace Money” funding (1995).

Suddenly, Lifestart projects were cropping up across Northern Ireland and cross-border regions. It was an incredible joy to watch a quiet, domestic act like parenting in the home become recognized as a core pillar of community development and the peace process itself.

Carrying the Mercy Values with us

Other major supporters joined our journey, including the International Fund for Ireland, which helped us set up a Foundation Office to quality-assure our expanding network. As we went global, we carried the Mercy values with us, always tailoring our work to respect local cultures.

When UNICEF invited us to Macedonia in 1997, our materials were translated into Macedonian, Greek, and Turkish. Pedagogues and paediatricians travelled to Derry for training, returning home with copies of The Growing Child and our manuals. Our staff made several return trips, collaborating with Bitola University to embed Lifestart into the official curriculum for local educators. In Zambia, where the AIDS epidemic had left countless children orphaned, we worked with Sisters on mission there and Family Visitors to support grandparents who had stepped back into the role of parenting, ensuring the essence of the programme brought comfort and structure to their homes (2007).

There were also deeply challenging frontiers. In 1998 members of the Jesuit community in Barcelona attended our conference in Galway and invited us to El Raval, an area struggling with severe poverty, drug abuse, and prostitution. They asked us what we could prevent in such a vulnerable environment. It was a stark reminder of our limitations - we knew we couldn’t “fix” everything. Instead, we focused on what we could do: raising awareness of childhood health needs and supporting the current generation of parents for the sake of the next. It required a delicate, joint approach of remediation and promotion.

Our journey has been a tapestry of deep joy and profound sadness. We planted seeds in a long-neglected corner of education. Some of those seeds fell by the wayside, but many blossomed beautifully.

Today, Lifestart projects continue to thrive and grow across Derry, Donegal, Leitrim, Sligo, Cavan, Louth, Monaghan, Kildare, Tipperary and Dublin, working in collaboration with other early years providers to give children the life’s-start they deserve.

Sister Dolores McGuiness RSM

Editor’s Note: What an extraordinary story. The idea that the acorn of a seed grew into such an impactful organisation and movement which went on to impact the Peace Process and local community development. Thanks to Dolores for taking the time to share this.

Photos used with permission.