Northern Ireland Community Relations Council - About Us - News - International Children's Day in association with Ballymena Inter Ethnic Forum

05 October 2010

Looking Back/ Looking Forward Conference Thursday 14th Oct

The Looking Back/Looking Forward Conference will provide an opportunity for young people from all nine Post Primary schools in Ballymena to have conversations around a DVD which features students from Ballymena addressing lessons they have learnt from the Holocaust.

The DVD was made last term and includes coverage of the Community Relations Week event when Zigi Shipper spoke at The Braid, and also workshops involving students from Cambridge House and St.Louis.

The Conference will help students challenge stereotypes of their own and others in order to acknowledge and address difference. Through an interactive talk with Dr Katy Radford, School of Sociology at QUB, whose mother Inga Radford survived the Holocaust they will be able to identify and address the issues that divide societies in Northern Ireland. It will also help them to explore their own ideas on how they could make Northern Ireland a better, more inclusive, place to live in.

The timing of this event couldn’t be better!!

Not only does the festival mark international Childrens Day – but the issue of Community Relations in Schools is out for public consultation.

This is a wonderful opportunity for pupils, and their teachers, to discuss Community Relations, and the role of Citizenship in the curriculum so that we can ensure that when we talk about ‘Looking Forward’ we are listening to what young people are saying.

Please let me know if you need more information.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Alastair Donaghy

Chair

Ballymena Inter-Ethnic Fourm

mob 079 1874 1046