A powerful message

That was the powerful message delivered to potential young leaders by a Londonderry man who was blinded by a rubber bullet as a child, and who later established a close friendship with the man who had pulled the trigger.

Thanks to links built with former mayor, Gerard Diver, the annual Five Nations Network Conference entitled, Citizenship and Values Education to the Rescue, was recently held in Londonderry.

The Five Nations Network website describes the organization as "a unique forum in England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales for sharing practice in education for citizenship and values".

On September 23, 2009, the Five Nations Network issued a shared Call to Action calling on politicians and policy makers across the five countries to make a renewed commitment to citizenship and education to enable young people to engage "with our increasingly complex, challenging and changing world".

The annual conferences have been organized by the Institute for Global Ethics UK Trust since 2000, with funding support from the Gordon Cook Foundation. Targeted at practitioners, policy makers, curriculum planners, the inspectorate, and more recently young people from within formal and non-formal education, each country takes its turn to host the annual conference, and participation is by invitation only.

At a special dinner held in the Guildhall, delegates listened intently as guest speaker, Richard Moore, author of the book, 'Can I Give Him My Eyes?', told the story of how his life had been changed when he was blinded as a primary school pupil by a rubber bullet fired by a soldier at close range.

One of the organizers said later: "Normally, when the guest speaker is talking, you can hear rustling and the odd whisper. All the time Richard was speaking, you couldn't hear a sound."

Introducing Mr Moore, Conor Harrison described the Londonderry man as "a symbol of active citizenship", telling how he had bought a pub by the time he was 18, went to university to study Social Administration, played in the band Midnight Hour (along with Felix Healy), walked the New York marathon and set up the charity Children in Crossfire.

Describing Mr Moore as "a champion" and "hero", Mr Harrison added: "He turned a disability into an ability".

Mr Moore told the Five Nations delegates, that it was an honour and a privilege to be invited to address them, adding: "I love Derry. Once I go away more than a week, I am homesick. I am delighted the conference has been held here."

Mr Moore told the delegates how, when he was a child, it was usual for shootings and riots to take place in Creggan, and recounted how he once stood in the estate and counted the bombs going off in the city centre.

Explaining the way the police station was protected on the edge of the estate, he told how, as he ran through the football pitch at St Joseph's secondary school on May 4, 1972, he was struck on the face by a rubber bullet fired by a soldier at close range. He woke up lying on the secondary school's canteen table, lost consciousness again, and "then I woke up in the ambulance with my daddy and sister beside me". His father didn't want to let his mother into the ambulance because he did not want her to see "the state I was in".

Brain damage

Initially, there were fears that Richard would die, and then that he would suffer lasting brain damage. Eventually the family learned he would be blind.

From Richard's point of view, given the alternatives that had been feared, being blind was almost a bonus.

It was around a month after the incident that Richard learned he would never see again, being told by a brother. Until then, he'd believed he would see when the bandages came off.

"For some reason, I accepted it like that," he told delegates at the Guildhall. "I only remember crying once about being blind and that was that night when I went to bed. I cried because I realized that I was never going to see my mammy and my daddy again. That was all that was important to me. But I went to sleep and I woke up the next day and I think that was the beginning of the rest of my life as a blind person."

"I was compensated for being shot and I bought a house with half and with the other half I bought a pub."

He later bought a second bar - later they were both sold when he set up his charity - and learned to play guitar, and became a director of Derry City Football Club.

In 1996, he set up the charity which his name has become synonymous with - Children in Crossfire.

The Troubles

"The reason I'm telling you all that...is because I believe I couldn't have done all these things if it wasn't for a number of factors. I came from a good family. I came from a good community. Despite the Troubles, I still had choices available to me."

Mr Moore said that, on that third point, he came to realize that "children in other parts of the world, who may have their eyesight, didn't have the opportunities I had."

"For me, poverty is not an issue of charity, it's an issue of justice," he added, saying that he had visited Africa and thought that for some children every human right had been abandoned and ignored.

"The reason why these people are suffering is because there isn't enough will in the world," he continued. "We find the money to fund weapons and things that destroy people."

With the global downturn, he said, the poor again suffered most with governments cutting their aid budgets.

"500 children are dying every day as the result of the credit crunch."

Turning back to the event that transformed his life, Richard said: "My family suffered enormously. I remember lying in my bed at night, pretending to be asleep, listening to my mother crying. She would come in and kneel down and say her prayers and then break down into an uncontrollable sob."

He said his father had cried in the street.

"My parents were not political. They were two lovely people who tried to keep us as safe as they could in very trying circumstances and despite all their efforts the Troubles found us."

His mother's brother, Gerard McKinney was one of those shot dead on Bloody Sunday, not many months before Richard was blinded.

While accepting his fate, there have been moments when Richard missed his eyesight.

While he was present when his children were born, "I would have given anything to see them."

First communion was another occasion he would not see: "In those moments I felt the legacy of violence."

Another significant factor was that Richard never felt bitterness about what had happened to him.

"I never heard my mammy or my daddy say an angry word. All it does is destroy you from the inside out."

He wanted to meet the soldier who blinded him, and the BBC were making a documentary and tracked him down. Richard flew to Scotland on his own, where he met the soldier, named Charles, for the first time. And he found that he liked him.

Amazing moment

"It was the most amazing moment of my life. I learned then two things about forgiveness.

One, is that forgiveness is first and foremost a gift to yourself.

"Two, the fact that I forgave Charles won't change the past. But what it did do, is change the future. I learned that, that day."

Asked by a delegate how he was able to do the things he had done in his life, Richard responded: "I believe it is the power of prayer."

"Blindness is an amazing journey. I have managed to embrace blindness."

He told how he was once in a remote African village and children kept coming up to him and touching him. It occurred to him that he was the only white person they had met, and someone told him the children had been trying to see if the white rubbed off.

He asked how much prejudice was based on eyesight, adding that in this city someone could look at a school uniform and make its wearer a target.

"If the whole world was blind we wouldn't have prejudice based on the colour of someone's skin," he said.

"My mammy's prayers were that I would get my eyesight back but I didn't get it back - but I believe I got a whole lot more.

"You can take their eyesight but you can't take their vision, and I believe that vision is the work I do through Children in Crossfire."

Call to action

The event in Londonderry revisited the Call to Action which was aimed at galvanising support in: promoting and strengthening the values of democracy, citizenship, human rights and good governance; educating people, particularly young people, to play an active and responsible part in democratic life and exercise their rights and responsibilities in society; preparing people with the knowledge, understanding, skills, attitudes and values needed to work together on issues, make decisions and take action thereby making a major contribution to community cohesion and equity in society.