We were excited to have guests from different countries at Public Achievement who came for a program called “Active Citizens” which was started by the British Council.
The young people arrived from Palestine, Pakistan, Nigeria, Vietnam and England to explore social, community and charity work in Belfast and to exchange experiences of their own countries. A week before volunteers from PA also visited Pakistan as a part of this program.
Luckily, we could join them, too - not only to help with organizing events but as participants as well.
During three days we visited the Northern Ireland Assembly, some Belfast organizations such as Duncairn Centre for Culture and Arts, Fortwilliam McCrory Centre and the SHINE Autism Group.
We did a Black Taxi Tour through interface areas in Belfast where we learnt a lot about the conflict history of Northern Ireland and especially for the international visitors this was very interesting, because they didn’t know a lot about the conflict and the post-conflict situation in Northern Ireland before they came here. But of course it’s also a cultural exchange, so we had a little Culture Night where we shared typical food and made friendship bracelets and went to “Culturlann” Belfast for having a huge Irish dinner and learning some Irish dancing afterwards.
It was very useful to learn specifically about social work and problems in other countries, compare them to experience of your country and Northern Ireland. For example, Ala from Palestine was very surprised to see that people in Belfast support Palestine with murals and flags, he’d never seen something like this in any other country before and felt very welcomed. Some people had a lot of first impressions – it was the first time for Amina from Nigeria and Rafia from Pakistan to see snow. So we had a really exciting week with all these people.
During the whole week we were also doing lots of EVS Skype interviews to select the new EVS volunteers starting in September 2015. It was a very hard decision because we had a lot of good applicants, but in the end we managed to pick two of them for the placements. Choosing volunteers is definitely nothing easy and takes a lot of time but it is also very interesting and a good experience.
We finished our Friday on the “Ending Hate” training at Crescent Art Centre, provided by the Good Relations Unit of Belfast City Council and South Belfast Roundtable.
In an interactive way we were taught how to deal with racism and hate crimes being witnesses, what minorities in Northern Ireland feel like and main causes of racism.
But that wasn’t the end! On Saturday we filmed a Demonstration against the 'Conscience Clause' in front of Belfast City Hall.
We hope you will see this report soon.
Ira&Isa
