Join abundance project
You're invited to join this epic project on citizenship and entrepreneurship. If you are an adult with Down syndrome who is interested in learning how to build your own version of a great life while improving your community, we are looking for you. Because Ireland needs future community leaders with Down syndrome.
In 2024, we ran Creative Approaches to Practical Community Advocacy, or CAPCA, to develop citizenship skills and support the active community leadership of more than twenty people with Down syndrome and their supporters.
Now we are recruiting participants for a new journey, From CAPCA to Abundance, to run from September 2025 through March 2026. THis will include a whole new version of CAPCA, plus a chance to explore starting a business through supported entrepreneurship ( - and that's the Abundance part).
Through the generous support of the Irish Government and Rethink Ireland, we can offer full scholarships to this pilot project, with all costs covered.
We are inviting teams made up of an adult with Down syndrome and their chosen supporter to submit an application. Initial deadline is September 25th, though we may extend this if there are any places still available at that time. We are recruiting primarily in the Galway area, though you can apply from anywhere in Ireland.
If you don’t have a partner, you can still apply. We try to match you up. Just contact us by email fionnathan.productions@gmail.com
Thank you for your interest in participating in a unique project in Citizenship and Entrepreneurship.
Who are we?
We are Fionn Crombie Angus and Jonathan Angus, co-founders of Fionnathan Productions, a social enterprise doing good works. We've visited 29 countries, from the Amazon to Zanzibar, but our home is Galway.
Fionn says, “We started this company ten years ago, and a lot of that time has been helping me, a young man with Down syndrome, create a great life for myself.” Jonathan adds, “We are more than ready to share all we’ve learned in the process.”
Fionn’s accomplishments include:
- Managing his bespoke disability support service (first in Ireland!)
- Spokesman for Decision Support Service, meeting with the Taoiseach
- Successfully lobbying 107 UK MPs for the Down Syndrome Act 2022
- Trustee to Down Syndrome Ireland and three other NGOs
- Teaching nature conservation to children in 90 schools
- Presenting at 36 universities, the Oireachtas, UK Parliament, and the UN
- 800 interviews for his Happiness Project (over 5 million Youtube watches)
- Interviewed by RTE, Irish Times, BBC, Sky News, and many podcasts
- Doing stand-up comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
- Performing traditional fiddle music in the Amazon Rainforest
Why do we do this?
It’s often noted that people with Down syndrome, while capble of experiencing the same full range of emotions as anyone else, seem to spend more time being happy. That can be a great strength. But it’s also true to say many of them don’t have the degree of choice in their lives that other adults take for granted. And they often lack ways to show all they can do.
People with Down syndrome are an undervalued resource to build a better society. Because their skill set is different from others in society, that difference is an essential element the community needs for its health.
Building on your strengths, ideas and resources, we can find creative ways to support your actions in community by growing entrepreneurial opportunities as a collective. From larger community actions to small-group and individual ideas, we will support you in creating wealth, in all its forms, for yourself and for our society.
Fionn has famously said that the greatest obstacle to his success has been the low expectations of people he encounters. There’s a lot of evidence that devaluing attitudes limit the ambitions of others with Down syndrome. We’ll be focusing on the positive: what you can do to create a great life for yourself while making the world better. From CAPCA to Abundance will be facilitated by Fionn and Jonathan, with project support by development expert Markus Vähälä from Finland, plus six other design team members, all CAPCA graduates with Down syndrome.
What are we going to do?
From CAPCA to Abundance has five parts:
- A seven week Online Course for us to get to know eachother and learn about the Keys to Citizenship. Some of the work will be done in your own time through eLearning modules. Our team will support you with weekly meetups online, Thursdays from 6.30 - 8.00pm.
- Two days of in-person Co-creation in Galway near the end of October. Our Factory will help you to make your ideas become real.
- Two months of work experience running our own Craft Shop in November and December 2025 selling your and other CAPCA participant's products and services. We will partner with other volunteers from Galway region companies and community groups.
- Abundance training and consultation starting January 2026 will help you to create your own team and a business plan. The Abundance training will give your team a business idea firm roots to grow. We will provide a small budget for you to create promotional materials and even prototypes of your idea in practice.
- CAPCA to Abundance will end in a special workshop event in Galway near World Down Syndrome Day 21.3.2026, where your business ideas, business stories and prototypes will be presented to a wide variety of stakeholders, decision makers, investors and entrepreneurs.
Below we’ll tell you a bit more about each part.
Online Course
You, your partners, supporters and other team members will get access to CAPCA training platform where you will learn a new theme. The online course will include home work that helps you to learn about citizenship, community development and business skills. You can do your studying at your own pace and we will provide online support using WhatsApp if you have any questions.
Each week we will come together online on Thursdays at 6.30pm - 8.00pm to discuss and share what we learnt together. The modules demonstrate what real citizenship looks like, or can look like. Some of these ideas are more than 200 years old, others come from a book just published last month. After the introductory session, the themes for each week will be Freedom, Life, Purpose, Home, Support and Money, six Keys to Citizenship, held together by Love, the keyring. The model is based on the work of Dr Simon Duffy, the founder of Citizen Network, a global network for inclusion, citizenship and community development. The final week will be a review of the journey we’ve travelled, and how it will be used at Craft Store and community actions during November and December.
In these meetings you will have an opportunity to say on the topics we discuss. We’ll review some of the main things from the week’s theme in a free-flowing, participant-led process. This way, you will learn from the leadership team, and practice leadership skills. Fionn and Jonathan will be the main facilitators of the course. The curriculum has been updated from the previous CAPCA training with the help of a design team, consisting of persons with Down syndrome who participated previously.
Because the course work online will be a combination of personal studies and discussions between participants, it’s important that all applicants intend to participate in all or nearly all sessions. All course participants will receive a certificate of completion and a copy of a new book Everyday Citizenship, a key source for our curriculum.
Then we'll have two in-person meet-ups, in a central Galway location near the end of October. We are calling these our Craft Making Events, with each team leading a project they have prepared. This community leadership experience is an essential part of the course, and we hope everyone can arrange to attend both sessions, with a meal included.
Factory
We will build your ideas into sellable products and services. We hope to establish a community space (a Factory) to continue to create items to be sold at our Craft Shop. This will have us the opportunity to have more community events and informal chat time to explore your enterprise ideas.
Craft shop in galway
We will run a Craft Store in Galway in November and December. You will have a significant retail apprenticeship in this time. This might be a stall at the Eyre Square Christmas Market. Or you may arrange to set up at a Craft Market pop-up shop as part of a Christmas Fair in your neighbourhood.
During these two months, you'll have personal guidance to bring your vision of an ideal enterprise into focus, for the business pilot projects in the new year. Your personal visions will be woven together with others, to create small groups working together to create business pilots.
Abundance
What is Abundance? Join us to find out. For the first three months of 2026, we will again meet online Thursday evenings, starting early January. On alternating weeks there will be different kinds of meetings, one week with all participants together and the other week with pilot groups. There will be homework between meetings.
These pilot projects are trial versions of businesses. There is no expectation that they will become actual real-life businesses, but this ‘practicing’ will give us the skills and confidence to potentially launch real start-ups.
As well as creating a business plan, each group will be supported to record to camera your business story, telling about yourselves and your pilot project. This will be filmed at a time and place convenient to each group.
The accelerator event
The project will end at an Accelerator event in Galway on or near World Down Syndrome Day (March 21st), where each group will present their ideas, etc. to business experts, investors, mentors, friends and family. Who knows? Perhaps new businesses will grow from this project.
You are warmly welcome to join us on this first-of-its kind journey. We feel that Ireland and the world is ready for change, and it can only happen if people get informed, get inspired, and take action for the good.
Please do let us hear from you, and if you are ready to register for this project, just click the button below to apply!
