The Ulster Project, Delaware:  Sowing Seeds of Peace

(Voices of Northern Ireland)

Founded in 1976 by Charles and Josephine Robinson, Ulster Project, Delaware brings 18 Northern Irish Catholic and Protestant teenagers, aged 14 to 16, and four adult leaders to Wilmington during the month of July where they live with local host teenagers.  Through a variety of activities--social, spiritual, service, and recreational, group building occurs and is continued once they return home through a two-year program of reunions and follow-up activities.  Ulster Project Delaware, now the oldest Ulster Project in the United States, has served as a model for the twenty-four other projects around the country.  It operates on a rotational system with three different towns in Northern Ireland:  Portadown, Banbridge, and Coleraine.

The young people and their families join together for picnics, trips, projects and "discovery" activities designed to enhance communication and build trust.  Read what some of them have to say:

• "Hope for Northern Ireland must lie within our youth who are not as entrenched in their views as their elders"

• "Many of the young people involved in the Ulster Project would not have met or known young people of other religious traditions had it not been for this program"

• "The project is one way through which young people can realize what it is like to be at peace with one another"

• "We have established a sense of unity and now we want to move forward as a group and keep in contact with each other in the future."

• "Over 3,000 young people have participated in the Ulster Project, and not one of them has ever become involved in a paramilitary terrorist organization in Northern Ireland." 

Visit the official Ulster Project, Delaware web site.

Request more information about this program.

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