In the lead up to the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, one local project is celebrating their community work which also celebrates 25 years in 2023.
Buddy Up! was set up by two North Belfast nursery schools inspired by the signing of the GFA and the prospect of peace for the next generation of children. At the centre of each ‘Buddy Up!’ programme are the pupils. Children from two different schools are paired together for the duration of the programme, giving each child a secure and supportive relationship.
The collaborative venture with Holy Cross Nursery School, Edenderry Nursery School and CRIS, involves the children, their parents and the staff of two schools to help bridge community division, bring children together at their most innocent and impressionable ages, and promote peace-building through creative, interpersonal and educational activities.
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This year alone will see the initiative engage 700 children and opportunities for their families from eight North Belfast schools, across the various lines of interfaces. The programme also operates in an additional 40 schools via the TEO Urban Villages Initiative.
Last week, at a special event in the Movie House at Cityside, CRIS (Community Relations in Schools) launched its Buddy Up! Digital Media Resource, a guide to support all schools in Northern Ireland to practically implement Buddy Up as an inter school buddy system in their own partnership working.
Speaking to Belfast Live, CRIS CEO Lisa Dietrich said: "The film that we made for the event, is based on an education resource that we have developed, sitting from 2019 because of the pandemic.
"It's an implementation guide to aid school teachers to adopt the pupil to pupil buddy system, and then to move on to engaging parents and family members, if that is something they'd be interested in. It was to replace training as such, in person. Other schools who watched it, thought it was great.
"We didn't want to launch this online, so it's been a long time coming, but we are delighted with how things went on Thursday. We wanted to link in with GFA, because that is what inspired the two principals to do this work.
"The event was brilliant and we had around 90 people there. It was important for us to be a celebration of community, so we had loads of parents from the Ardoyne and Shankill communities who have been invovled with the programme.
"Watching the film, it is really powerful. To see how people have made friends, connected, and maintained those friendships, is really powerful stuff. The audience was parents, schools across the Urban Villages area, and 15 schools.
"We also had our core funders who have been instrumental in developing the practise. I am glad that we went with it, and there were a lot of tears. People got emotional, including myself when I was doing the storyboard. There is that emotional connection with this film, and the programme."
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