Voice, Equality, Experience, and Power (VEEP)

Voice Equality Experience Power (VEEP) is a community mental health and poverty platform for community and voluntary workers and organisations, and experts by experience, working to address the social determinants of mental health and the root causes of poverty and inequality across the island of Ireland.

The purpose of the group is yo use our knowledge and experience to create a shared momentum for a transformative, rights-based approach to achieve mental health equity that is community-led, preventative in focus, and oriented toward systemic change.

Where did VEEP come from?

VEEP’s work has been led by Community Development & Health Network (CDHN) and Community Work Ireland’s (CWI) Community Development and Mental Health Network, with 13 wide-ranging partner organisations. In our first year we established a partnership forum and connected local community development and mental health projects, north and south. We created opportunities for organisations to work on joint areas of interest, and to share resources & good practices.

What is VEEP striving to achieve?

In the second year we intend to use our open dialogue and discussion platform to:

Build a shared, cross border understanding of the interconnected factors that link poverty, social exclusion and mental, physical and emotional health

Harness the expertise of the membership of the initiative to influence all policy implementation and practice as it relates to mental health and the social determinants of health, when the opportunity arises, and capture a structured community dialogue process

Safely explore the necessary cultural and systemic changes required to implement the North, South and International policy and practices needed to achieve our purpose

Highlight examples of current good community development practice & peer-to-peer approaches addressing mental health inequalities

What's Next?

A further programme of events will take place in Autum 2025 around Building a Common Language for Collaboration

Purpose: to build recognition with mental health policymakers about the value of inclusive, collaborative, co-designed processes to build consensus with people and communities, that are trauma informed and prioritize shared decision-making with people most affected by inequalities and mental health challenges.

Online Seminar 1 - ‘Speaking my language’ Online Open Dialogue Forum

An open discussion on the differences in the meaning and diversity in the collaborative language used in north and south policies for participation, engagement co-production, and partnership with communities and experts by experience.

This took place 23rd September Online via zoom, 12noon to 2pm

Online Seminar 2 - Case Study Ballymun Declaration: Co-design and consensus building process to shift the mental health narrative. Further details to be confirmed.

If you would like to be kept updated about these events or VEEP work, please complete an Expression of Interest here

Any questions, email eleanormckenna@cdhn.org

Partner Organisations

Voice Equality Experience Power - Year One

The project began in 2023 with the creation of our advisory group, who worked to together to create a programme of events throughout 2024 to provide opportunities to connect, share experiences, discuss good practices, and exchange resources to support community work. Find out more about each of the events at the links below:

North South Ideas Exchange - Dublin

Crunch Time Webinar Series
In the Autumn/Winter, we invited individuals to join our Crunch Time webinar series—an online community space designed for anyone interested in exploring community development responses to mental health and poverty.

Seminar 1: What does a Community Development response to Mental Health look like?

Seminar 2: The Power of Story, Nature and Community for Mental Wellness

Seminar 3: Open Dialogue - A Transformative Methodology

North South Exchange Visit - Derry/Londonderry

Presentation of Work to Date at PHA Conference
CDHN staff also presented some findings from our webinar series and research at the PHA's Public Mental Health Conference in June 2025. Two posters were presented:
Key Ingredients of a Communty Development Response to Mental Health & Poverty
Comparing Public Mental Health and Community Inclusion Strategies across the Island of Ireland

Our Funders
Funding from the St Stephen’s Green Trust enabled the network to come together in late 2023, and further funding until December 2025 from the Shared Island Civic Society Fund (Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade, IRE) has allowed us to build on the connections forged in year one of the project.