Second First Derry event

An initiative designed to promote better community relations and build a better, brighter shared future, the ‘Conversations’ series was inaugurated last month by President Mary McAleese. This month 600 college students will converge on the church for the conversation, which will feature Richard Moore, who spearheads the Charity Children In Crossfire, and the soldier who shot and blinded him.

“Recognising the wedge that successfully separates the city’s two communities flowing from decades of civil unrest; accepting the residue of human hurt, which the Eames/Bradley investigation was sadly unable to salve and acknowledging how local people feel somewhat excluded from the process of peace-building that is largely concentrated at Stormont, is the rationale stimulating this particular Initiative,” said Dr Latimer.

“The fractured citizens of Derry/Londonderry’s two communities must be envisioned to see how they can be better together. To limit ourselves to friends, colleagues, acquaintances and partners who reflect ourselves back to ourselves is to live such a diminished and narrowing life. However, to open ourselves to stories, narratives, perspectives, insights and friendships, which are new to us, is to open the doors of our lives to a much more exciting and enriching landscape.

“By bringing people from both Catholic and Protestant backgrounds together we are sending out a clear signal that we are unwilling to drag the toxic attitudes and practices of the past into the present and that we are determined to stop their poison from travelling any further than they already have.

“At the beginning of October a packed church listened with rapped attention to the simple words used by President McAleese to convey a powerful message. It was so encouraging to listen to a. inspirational world leader observe how as a divided society we were no longer at the bottom of the steep hill looking up, that we were moving up the hill and the higher up we trudge, the better the landscape gets and the more confident we become that the summit is a place worth aiming for,” he said, adding that 600 16-year-old students from the Controlled and Maintained sectors would be attending this month’s talk, ‘The Perpetrator and the Victim’, which will include live entertainment by singer/songwriter Paul Casey and a question and answer session. The facilitator will be Paul McFadden.

Refreshments will be served afterwards in the Tower Hotel.

“Meeting people who are different and who live in another part of our city is the first step in getting to know our neighbours. All of us want to be part of a city that cultivates enduring friendships. This is possible through encouraging conversations across all the barriers real or imagined, where friendships that previously floundered can now blossom and progressively lead us to inherit a better, brighter shared future,” said Dr Latimer.