Portadown estates, with nationalities from Cameroon to Cape Verde, Luxembourg to Lithuania, Uganda to USA, St Kitts to Slovakia plan multi-cultural ‘meet the neighbours’ street party

Around 200 residents of the Drumford Meadow and Drumford Close areas have already joined an online group to organise the street party at the end of August.

With almost 20 nationalities from some of the most beautiful and interesting places on earth, the street party promises to be a dizzying delight of delicious food, music and culture.

People from almost 20 countries to bring food, music and culture to the event

Mabel Armstrong, who hails originally from Cameroon, is spearheading the event and has had a huge response from her neighbours.

So far those who have joined up are from Cameroon, Sri Lanka, St Kitts, Cape Verde, Bangaldesh, Portugal, India, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Uganda, Belarus, Latvia, Slovakia, Luxembourg and the USA as well as all parts of the UK and Ireland,

Who is organising it

Mabel, who is married to Portadown native Jonathan Armstrong, said: “We got a few other residents together and the team has been planning a big get together so that everyone can meet up and get to know each other better.

“The food will be unreal. It is so exciting to get everyone together. I would never be able to go to half these countries in my lifetime so it is a great way of meeting people and finding out about their culture and food.”

Mabel migrated up to NI from the south about two years ago having worked on her Masters degree at Queen’s University in Belfast in Human Resource Management.

She revealed that they have musicians attending and lots of balloons and activities for the local children as well as a local Zumba dance group.

“The diversity of cultures in the estates has encouraged families to do something together where food from the different cultures, music, dance and children games will run throughout the day and be the rapport builder and an opportunity to know and commune with the next door neighbours in all our cultural diversity.

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“While work places and schools are all building on the importance and advantages of diversity and inclusion, to understand empower and respect different backgrounds, cities and towns and countries are doing same.

“In our own small scale way we want to be in a neighbourhood which is inclusive and respectful to each other.

“Some local businesses and business owners within the estate are supporting the party and this will be a platform for cultural exchange and integration that, even though it is just in a small part of the town, proves how far the town has come.

“We are hosting a committee meeting to finalise plans for the day on the first Thursday of August,” Mabel explained. “We think this is an initiative to boost integration at micro levels within the town that contributes to the towns bigger integration scheme.”

For more information, contact Mabel via [email protected]