Community

Gráinne O Neill, integration support co-ordinator with Carlow County Council, has highlighted the importance of food in bringing people together. Local authorities and community organisations around the country regularly host events to promote integration and she pointed to the success of Tullow’s Multi-Cultural Supper Club - held recently for new arrivals into the county.

Men, women and children desperately escaping the war in Ukraine have found a warm home-away-from home in Cloughaneely. Every week, Fáilte Isteach Falcarragh hosted by the local community centre, Pobail Le Chéile, attracts a multi-national group of volunteers to help these war-weary refugees improve their English-language skills under a project that promotes greater integration and a deeper sense of community spirit by forging new friendships and facilitating learning about different cultures.

While Gaza is almost completely under siege, Palestine’s West Bank, despite Israeli attacks there, remains accessible to community workers and humanitarian workers seeking to provide support, bear witness and show solidarity. Oliver Moore went with a farming organisation and visited mostly rural communities in the West Bank:

Changing Ireland called into the Hub on the Hill and spoke to three clients about why they like being tenants of the enterprise centre. Here's why Shane Riley of Moyee Coffee, solicitor Siobhan Conlon and telephone entrepreneur David McDonald are so enthused with the place.

Inner City Enterprise, known as ICE throughout Dublin city, is a not-for-profit charity, set up to help unemployed individuals, social enterprises and youth entrepreneurs to establish their own businesses in Dublin’s inner city. Funded partially by the Department of Rural and Community Development’s SICAP Programme, ICE has two full time and five part-time staff and it serves as the enterprise wing of Dublin City Community Co-Op. Over the course of the last 11 years, ICE has helped establish over 1,600 new businesses throughout the inner city.

At first, they didn’t know why they were there. When I arrived at Tiglin’s Aftercare Programme in Greystones to deliver a module on Sustainable Community Development, I was met with blank stares and blunt honesty. Some participants, like Gerry, told me outright: “I don’t see how this is useful to me”. Others said they planned to return to trades and couldn’t see how learning about community development would fit into their lives. For a few, the idea of anything resembling formal education brought a visible wave of unease.

Local Development Week 2025, held last week, was marked by over 50 activities and events all over the country and here we provide a snapshot. In Co. Donegal, Inishowen Development Partnership had a huge turnout for its Insight into Employment and Training in Inishowen workshop at its Buncrana office (pictured above). It provided an insight into employment and training opportunities available on the peninsula. The event was led by the organisation's employment support team in collaboration with Connecting Communities officer Patricia Higgins.

When I was growing up, Eastern Europe was a mysterious entity reduced to caricatures from spy movies. My knowledge about Ukraine, before the Russian invasion, was limited to Chernobyl, soccer star Andrey Shevchenko, the Klitschko brothers (boxers) and the 2014 War. The fact that the country and its people were as eclectic as those in Western Europe was lost on many of us and it has been a pleasure to get to know Ukrainians, even though we should never have had the opportunity. Here are 12 things I have learned about Ukraine and its people since February, 2022.