PeacePlayers Featured For Bridging Divides in Northern Ireland
May 28, 2021
As recent world news underscored, around the world religion is too often used as a tool of division. However, Beyond Sport Network Member, PeacePlayers, which uses sport to unite divided communities and create a more peaceful world, is also working around the world to address this. The organisation's Northern Ireland site was recently featured by the Daily Mail and Made by Sport for its work to foster connections between school children of different religious backgrounds across Northern Ireland.
As they explain, despite the existence of a decades-old peace agreement between Catholics and Protestants there, religious division remains strong. This segregation extends to the communities where people live, the schools they attend and the sports they play. According to the Department of Education, as of 2017, 93% of the province’s children attended segregated schools. For those under school-leaving age, mixing with children from a different background is very rare.
“In the rest of the world, an integrated school is one that has boys and girls in it,' said PeacePlayers' Nicole Breslin to the Daily Mail. 'In Northern Ireland, an integrated school is one with both Catholic and Protestant kids. They can be right across the road from one another - it's just nuts.”
PeacePlayers Northern Ireland helps thousands of youth challenge division, prejudice and racism through sport. Coupling basketball with leadership and personal development programmes, it is helping close the gap between Protestants and Catholics in schools. Resultingly, 91% of participants interacted with someone from a different background for the first time.
“I can think of five or six people off the top of my head who I am now good friends with that I wouldn't have known outside of Peace Players,' said 13-year-old Shea from east Belfast. 'I go to a Catholic school. So, I wouldn't get to meet many Protestants because I just haven't been given a chance to interact with them outside of PeacePlayers.
'It's been great — getting to meet all these people from different backgrounds, celebrating the diversity in Northern Ireland.”
The site's year-round intervention programme includes pairing a predominantly Catholic school class with a predominately Protestant class, bringing one to the other and then swapping round. The next level would then be for the two classes to engage at a neutral venue with a basketball court. For older participants, there is also an opportunity to learn to become coaches and to give back to their community by coaching the younger children.
“We do it all under our slogan: kids that can play together can learn to live together. We see friendships develop every day because of our programmes and it's great to witness,” said Breslin.
Along with Northern Ireland, PeacePlayers operates in the United States, the Middle East, South Africa and Cyprus. PeacePlayers US was one of our winners for the 2020 Sport for Reduced Racial Inequalities Collective Impact Award Supported by The DICK'S Sporting Goods Foundation.