Going Beyond the Silence (GBTS) is a cross-community women’s project based out of Ráth Mór – but working with a number of individual women and women’s groups and constituencies from across the island of Ireland (with a primary focus currently on Derry-Dungannon-Magherafelt). The project is built on the foundation of the ground-breaking ‘Unheard Voices‘ (UV) Project – also delivered by Creggan Enterprises and funded by the International Fund for Ireland. The model of engagement developed by this pioneering UV programme, which seeks to reconcile communities and address the legacy of the conflict through intensive (and varied) work with women, has proved extremely successful with what many would suggest are a constituency which are largely marginalised, ignored and ‘left behind’ survivors of the conflict and indeed the Peace process.
At the core of this work is one-to-one personal development, capacity building, mentoring and engagement – using the foundation of personal testimony and oral history as a vehicle for creating room for dialogue and positive social change (establishing relationships across traditions and communities and sharing, often very traumatic, experiences as a way of breaking down barriers and building trust).
GBTS aim to create a series of podcasts and an accessible web archive (oral history archive) of these stories for use by community development organisations, centres of learning/education, heritage centres, peace and reconciliation organisations and cultural organisations (as well as for dissemination to the wider general public). These resources will be made available on a dedicated page – as and when they are developed.
This project is funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
Please contact the project co-ordinator Carol Cunningham at: carol@rathmor.com for more information.