February
22, 2014
Wednesday
and Thursday – two days chock full of stimulating conversations, curiosity,
confusion, questions, great food, and at the end of the day ... immense pride
in our Canadian womens’ hockey team for winning the gold.
Wednesday
began with a visit to the East Belfast Mission (www.ebm.org.uk), a project of
the Methodist church, which has in one way or another occupied the site since
the late 1700s. The present building, which has won awards for its architecture
and elements of sustainability, is home to three stages of housing – a shelter,
transition housing, and separate apartments - numerous offices and studios,
rooms for dance, yoga, workshops and classes, a sanctuary, and a wonderful cafe called "refresh", with very affordable and delicious food.
Megan Miller, manager of Compass
(one of the organizations of the East Belfast Mission), gave us a presentation
on “Skainos”, which is the manager, or landlord, for the mission. This is from
their website: “... the word is from a biblical Greek word and rooted firmly in
Christian tradition and history, the name Skainos speaks of the importance of
practical engagement with a community by figuratively pitching a tent in its
midst, and it hints at the notion of hospitality and the extended family.
An alternative meaning for the word is as a description of the frailty of human
beings. It stands therefore as a useful counterbalance to the temptation to
focus solely on new building to the detriment of serving people.” Megan, said that
folks loosely translate the word to mean “God’s living among the people.”
This concept is evident in the
structure of the building, and in its philosophy and theology of operation.
Megan said that the original vision was to have an “urban village” ... where
all would be welcome. One can see this vision lived out in the one of the outside walls, a
living wall (pictured with the group, below), in the small details of
architecture that give a nod to the industrial heritage of the area, and even
in the sanctuary, where large windows purposefully look out to the homeless
shelter (also pictured below) to remind folks inside that they are not
separated from their community.
For anyone interested in church development, and what is possible,
Skainos is a dream. They have many programs for children, youth, families, and
seniors, including a highly successful Irish language program called “turas”,
which has participants from both loyalist and republican backgrounds. The word
“turas” actually means journey in both Irish and Scottish language. Another
amazing part of the organization is its commitment to social enterprise. Again,
from their website: “A social enterprise is also known as “not–for–profit” as
profits are used to further social and environmental goals rather than
distributed to financial investors.” Some of the current social
economy/enterprises of Skainos are a cafe, a for profit daycare centre, and a
used clothing shop.
After the East Belfast Mission, we
had another lively and informative session at the Andy Tyrie Interpretive
Centre, a museum of the UDA. I wrote about this organization on last years trip
(check out the February 2013 entries) but it’s safe to say we were all engaged
by Billy Rowan, Mark Anderson, and Alan Price, former combatants who talked about present day
challenges and engaging youth in the community. As we heard last year, their
challenges are in continuing to advocate for the renouncing of violence, and in engaging young people in the political
process to work for change.
Thursday we visited the Corrymeela
Belfast office for a time with Sean Pettis, whose role is Programme Coordinator
for the Facing Our Past Shaping our Future project, part of the larger Facing
Our History and Ourselves project. This is a project that engages high school
youth and teachers in conversations about ethical decision making and
citizenship, using the Holocaust as a case study. Sean said that using a
distant case study often helps people look at their own context more easily,
helping folks to first explore universal themes and then move into the particular
themes that apply to their own context.
We learned a lot from Sean, and he
packed much into an hour and a half, including several short videos, one about Facing Our History and Ourselves:
We left quite energized, and with
lots of materials and ideas for our work with Halifax high schools in March.
Ivan Cross, youth worker for
Corrymeela, then hosted us on a tour of the peace walls and interface
neighbourhoods of Belfast. Although we had seen many of them before, it was
great to have Ivan’s commentary and explanations of some of the context and
history of the walls.
Filled with information, more
questions, and lots of ideas for connecting our work in Canada with the work of
peacebuilding in this area of the world, folks headed off in different
directions to explore Queen’s University, the Botanical Gardens, the Ulster
Museum, or the charity shops in the area before dinner at one of our favourite
restaurants, The Bird Cage.
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