About the IPC Project.

"An Integrated Approach to Peace-Building"

The Irish Peace Centres project is delivered by a consortium of peace-building organisations who seek to cultivate and sustain positive relationships at a local level across the region and across traditional sectarian and new social divides. It is envisaged that a network of people and groups will grow out of the consortium, which will contribute to a change in attitudes and behaviours relating to sectarian and racism. The members of the consortium include:

• Co-operation Ireland;
• the Corrymeela Community;
• The Donegal Peace Centre; and
• the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation

The Irish Peace Centres is funded by the Peace III Programme, administered and delivered by the Special EU Programmes Body.

The Irish Peace Centres programme involves the delivery of four inter-related activities which are detailed as follows:

• Developing a Consortium

This activity is aimed at creating a strategic cross border structure for supporting the network of people engaged in cultivating positive relationships at local level.  Activities include events, meetings, workshops, residentials and training sessions that will take place at all three centres within a cross border strategic plan. Consortium activities also include:

• network cultivation and support,
• promoting the concepts behind the work of the consortium
• creating dialogue forums that enable a wider discussion regarding peace building activities.

This activity stream also includes a major outreach and facilitation programme to maximise and encourage participation of groups and individuals who may not have previously engaged with the Peace Centres or previous programmes.

• Interface Reconciliation

This activity is a local and specific intervention in interface areas that provides a strong local dimension to the whole project. It seeks to develop capacity engagement across traditional and emerging cultural divides. Activities will include training for intercommunity interface groups through residential community based capacity building programmes such as:

•  community relations;
• experiential learning;
• cultural diversity;
• conflict management;
• mediation;
• creative expression;
• group work and communication.  

A high quality, intercommunity interface reconciliation programme will be developed and disseminated.  A number of participants will be drawn from interface areas and trained.  Six groups will be further supported in their work.  A number of individual interface workers will be given further training and support to further interface reconciliation at the local level at interface areas.

• Experiential Learning

This activity provides the research and training component of the whole project and aims to capture the institutional and personal learning and best practice through issue based action research.  The approach will be bottom up and exploratory and will result in new ways to understand and articulate the peace building work that is being conducted and continues in Ireland, North and South.  Actions will include:

• holding five master class seminars;
• a bi-annual international conference;
• two internal research studies per year and one external research study per year;
• the development of web based publications.

The consortium will work towards mainstreaming peace building and highlighting the benefits of transferability for this group of people.  Both Donegal and Glencree centres are accredited learning centres with NIOCM and FETAC respectively.  Training will be offered to a range of organisations including those in the public sector, and will consist of both accredited and non-accredited training on good relations including inter-generational and intercultural issues.

• Sustainable Positive Relationships

Activity 4 links regional relationship building to local situations, thereby increasing the impact of the relationship building work both locally and regionally. It is intended to undertake ‘deeper’ peace work with mid-level leaders on an annual basis who will in turn influence people and communities with which they work in a ripple effect. There will be four types of activities to include: cultivating the core group of participants, planting seeds of reconciliation in local communities, promoting inter-faith relationships and creating environments to aid the reconciliation process.

AUDIO

Irish Peace Centres was invited to exhibit at the SEUPB Conference in May.  Peace Radio interviewed Susan McEwen (Activity 2 Co-ordinator).

Download the audio clip to hear Susan explain Irish Peace Centres - a Peace III funded programme.

Special Thanks to SEUPB for providing the audio clip. This file is 5.3MB and is in MP3 format.