Meet the teenagers calling for action on violence against women and girls

Meet the teenagers calling for action on violence against women and girlsImage caption, Eimear believes a Stormont minister dedicated to improving women's safety and health will change livesByOlivia CopelandBBC News NIPublishedJust nowDisappointed and disheartened by news stories about women being attacked and killed, four teenagers decided watching the news wasn't enough.Instead of scrolling on, the friends decided to take matters into their own hands and start a campaign of their own.Now, aged 18 and 19, they are calling for Stormont to create a dedicated Minister for Women's Safety and Health, arguing Northern Ireland needs someone whose sole focus is improving women's safety, healthcare and education.Helping to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG) first inspired Eimear, Pearse, Aoísha and Devyn to form 'The Athrú Project', but the group's aims go beyond one issue.Image caption, The teenagers, from Ballycastle, feel little is being done to tackle violence against women and girlsAccording to Women's Aid, VAWG is defined as being "directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately". The charity recently said 31 women have been killed in Northern Ireland since 2020.In the vast majority of these cases these women were killed by a man or it is a man who has been charged in connection with their deaths.In August 2025, Pearse O'Neill, now 19, noticed that he and his friends were seeing more and more about VAWG on the news.At the same time, he was becoming concerned about misogynistic behaviour he was seeing among younger boys.A few months prior, he had completed work experience with the charity Politics in Action, which he says made him realise starting a campaign was "not really this big daunting thing that was impossible and needed millions of pounds of funding".As a friend group, they would talk about politics and current issues, and Pearse asked if anyone...