Worldview Personas: Community Champion, Aoife

Aoife, aged 38, is originally from a rural part of Wexford and now lives in Kilkenny city, with her partner Eoghan, in a two-bed house they recently bought. They have no children. Aoife works fulltime as a project manager for a renewable energy company that has offices in both Kilkenny and Dublin.

Aoife met Eoghan while they were both studying for degrees in environmental sciences at Trinity College Dublin. Aoife also has a postgraduate diploma in project management from Trinity.

Aoife and Eoghan had been renting in Dublin but wanted to buy their own home with a garden. Unable to afford Dublin house prices in an area where they would have liked to live and with a decent sized garden, they decided to relocate to Kilkenny city. For Aoife it was a logical decision, due to house prices there being more affordable, the train line to Dublin offering a manageable commuting distance ─ she needs to work from the Dublin office two days a week ─ and the small city’s laidback, friendly atmosphere, vibrant cultural scene, cleaner air and beautiful countryside on their doorstep.

Aoife cares deeply about sustainability, environmental issues and climate change, and she gets great satisfaction from her job. In her spare time, you can generally find her in her garden or at a yoga class. Since moving to Kilkenny, she’s become involved in a number of local community initiatives, including evening courses run by a local branch of The Repair Café and in furniture upcycling.

At the weekends, she visits her parents, who live a 45-minute drive away on a farm in Wexford. She likes to listen to a podcast on the drive in their electric car. Her father had some health setbacks in recent years and her brother manages the farm now. Her brother will usually call in while she’s there to catch up and share opinions on news, including about aspects of agriculture like reducing chemicals, the nitrates derogation, the threatened Mercosur trade deal, and biodiversity. They’ll discuss wider issues, too, like immigration, including about Aoife’s worry that Ireland is becoming less open and welcoming to refugees. Aoife’s conversations with her parents now tend to focus on their health, in particular her father’s. He needs to attend regular hospital appointments and is on various medications. 

Aoife is a member of several special interest groups and representative organisations, including Friends of the Earth, Irish Wildlife Trust and Irish Seed Savers. She reads their regular e-newsletters, signs petitions and attends organised events and marches where possible. She also regularly donates to these as well as other charities and NGOs.

In the morning, Aoife checks The Irish Times and The Guardian online newspapers on her phone over breakfast ─ she is a subscriber to both. She believes strongly in the need for independent, quality, trustworthy journalism, especially by campaigning experts on climate change like George Monbiot and John Gibbons.

When commuting to and from Dublin by train, she reads online longform news articles, including in The Currency, and scrolls Instagram for news and updates on credible accounts that she follows of journalists, campaigners, special interest groups and influencers. She limits her time on TikTok but does view videos of influencer accounts she follows like The Useless Project. On her commute home to Kilkenny, she listens to Drivetime on RTÉ Radio 1. In the evening at home, she catches up with the daily news on TV.

Quick Look:

Where do we find Aoife?

At work in offices between Kilkenny and Dublin, at the train station, in her garden, at a furniture upcycling workshop, her family farm in Co. Wexford, at marches campaigning for climate justice, river clean-ups, her yoga class.

What influences Aoife?

Extended family, RTE, BBC and Channel 4 TV News, Instagram feeds of campaigners and journalists, Facebook private groups and feeds of special interest groups, the radio (Morning Ireland, Brendan O’Connor, The Last Word on Today FM), Podcasts (Inside Politics, The Food Programme BBC).

Avenues for engagement

Aoife’s active involvement in the community means she is influenced by local initiatives and the people leading them, motivated to attend local events, and become a member of a community group. Community Champions rank special interest groups/social campaigns and local community groups/initiatives highly in terms of responsibility for social change.

Messaging Recommendations to reach Community Champions like Aoife

It is important to note that Community Champions, such as Aoife, show greater reliance on special interest groups/representative organisations as sources of influence than other audience segments. They seem to believe that those with specialised understandings are the most reliable topics on specific issues. The fact that Aoife is actively involved in the community suggests that she is also influenced by local initiatives and the people leading them, and motivated to attend local events and join a community group. Indeed, according to the Worldview 2025 findings, in terms of who or what is influential in bringing about social change, Community Champions rank local community groups/initiatives in third place (after government policy in first place and in second place, special interest groups, lobby groups or social campaigns), indicating that they place significant weight on their importance.

For Community Champions, frame overseas development through:

• Climate justice – communities least responsible for climate change face the worst impacts.
• Food security – via projects that support agriculture and food availability.
• Renewable energy – projects that harness renewables.
• Community-led solutions/ locally led development.

Explore Aoife’s narrative more below.