Is there a youth club / cafe in Maynooth ?

From someone who works in youth work and has lived in Maynooth. I'm also currently in the middle of establishing a youth cafe style drop in in Dublin, I'd say there are a few problems.

For a project like this to be successful it needs a large volunteer base, Maynooth does have some advantages here. The youth and community work course in the college is one of the best recognised in the country and students from there are always looking for placement opportunities. The downside of this is to take students on a project needs to have full time qualified workers.

Another problem (and the major one facing most youth projects and cafes) is funding. The government are releasing further funding specifically for youth cafes but from what I can tell the majority of this has already been designated to projects. The idea of a self sustaining cafe is a good one but is very hard to set up and manage. It is hard to get volunteers at the best of times and even harder when they will have responsibility for money. We had looked at going down that route ( we would be in a busy part of Dublin and so could have set up a cafe within the space to make money) but to be honest it was too much hassle. We looked into it and you would have to be very careful as well, youth cafe's and project usually have charitable status but once you begin to make money this can cause problems.

Area's that receive funding for youth cafe's normally have long existing successful youth projects, many of which started as voluntary but moved into having paid staff. These tend to be in areas that are classed as disadvantaged and would rank highly on the deprivation score index (takes into account number of things, numbers of young people not completing secondary education, number going to further education, down to something as simple as number of cars per household). I'd don't know the figures for Kildare but from my experience of working in different areas in Dublin I wouldn't say Maynooth scores highly in this.

My advice, for what is worth, would be to try establish a smaller youth drop in style project, maybe open 2 evenings a week (depending on volunteers). Further down the line I would say the best way to establish a cafe would be to look at a regional one for the Maynooth, Celbridge and Leixlip area. There are already youth projects up and running in Celbridge and Leixlip and I'd say the numbers would be there to support it. This would be a very long term goal though.

Hope all of that is of some use to people.