A Message of Hope from Belfast

One of the proudest accomplishments of the World Forum Foundation is the work of the World Forum Reconciliation Team. This team, representing early childhood professionals working in 14 nations torn asunder by armed conflict, has been working together to share stories and strategies about how early childhood programs can bring divided communities back together. They are working on a book of strategies to share at the 2007 World Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In recent weeks with the growing hostilities in the Middle East, team members have been in frequent contact with each other sharing their concerns and hopes. I have excerpted below one such message from Siobhan Fitzpatrick, executive director of NIPPA— the early years organisation from Belfast, Northern Ireland…

“I would like to share a story of hope with you all, a story which is only really making sense to me against the background of all the horror from the Middle East. This week in my village we are celebrating the annual community festival, it is called “the Fiddler’s Green Festival”, after a local area in the hills around me where the local people used to go on summer evenings to play music and have the craic! It is a truly beautiful place; you can either walk to it from the village through an ancient oak forest or for the brave and the strong (i.e., me), you can come over the mountain a pleasant but fairly arduous stroll of six miles. When you get there, you are in a kind of magical place surrounded by forest and overlooking Carlinfiord Bay.

”What I didn’t know was that there was going to be a celebration to mark the 25th anniversary of the little parent and toddler group which I had started with many friends from the village 25 years ago. That was the year of the Hunger Strikes and a particularly serious period of dreadful violence. For example, a young man was shot dead outside the front window of my house and my little girls aged 3 and 1 witnessed it and were traumatized; our neighbors were held hostage; the lane to their house booby trapped with explosives, and the whole area around us seemed to be descending into ever increasing circles of madness. I remember as a young parent thinking we had to do something to compensate and rail against the violence which did not represent me or my young family. The Parent and Toddler Group was partly an answer, a place where young parents and their children from across the sectarian divide could come together and learn to play together in peace.

”Yesterday the toddlers of 25 years ago, now young adults making their way in a complex world, were asked to stand up and in beautiful sunshine, overlooking one of the most beautiful scenic areas in the world, were applauded for little more than being there, alive, strong, tolerant. For me in that moment they shone out as a spirit of hope. They had survived and were now as young adults on the threshold of lives full of hope able to take part in one of the most normal of activities, a Sunday picnic with their family, their friends, and their local community. Twenty-five years ago I did not dare to expect something so beautiful nor so ordinary.

“And in that moment of simple celebration I thought of you all, and saw all your faces…. I wish you could have shared this moment with me because for me it summed up what we want for the children caught up in war and violence: the chance to live an ordinary and very normal life, what we are working for, what the book is about, what we can not dare to give up on.

”I had hopes for my children 25 years ago but I had feared that these hopes would not become a reality and that their lives would have been blighted by a war that had no winners. Yesterday I had one of those priceless moments, just looking at the wonderful young men and women around me, remembering them all from those dark days of hopelessness, as babies and toddlers, helpless and caught up in a war, fought often in their name by the adults around them. And it was a great moment, one of those I will cherish the rest of my life to see them all alive and strong and hopeful.”

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