Editor's Picks

Up to half the 600-plus people who attended a jobs fair in Co. Kerry on Monday were refugees or asylum-seekers. Interviews for some took place on the spot and employers, job-seekers and the organisers - focused as they are on integration - rightly declared the event a success.

A new style ‘Community Call’ is all but certain after Joe O’Brien, Minister of State with special responsibility for Community Development and Charities, met earlier today with over 150 leaders from the community and voluntary sector and local government. He called for the same “spirit” that was evident in the response to the pandemic at community and national level. As a start, the Department of Rural and Community Development has given a “commitment to allow flexibility in [community] schemes and programmes so people are freed up to work with new arrivals”.

Writer and disability rights activist Sarah Fitzgerald writes about the impacts and inadequacies of disability services - and what needs to change.

In Wexford - as  featured in our long read here -  community workers under SICAP made people welcome during a pandemic. The same good community work is happening across the country, from Inchicore to West Mayo. It is but one of many #SicapStories. It would make for an ideal television series, as amateur film-makers are proving.

The pandemic has shown us more than ever the importance of self-care, writes Nicola Browne. She asks - why are social justice organisations so slow to practice what they preach when it comes to wellbeing?

Free Irish language and sean-nós dance classes are being offered to new Irish communities in Meath, Louth and Cavan this month through a collaboration by Cultúr Migrants Centre and Conradh na Gaeilge. The online classes are some of the many events taking place across the country - mostly online - during this year’s Seachtain na Gaeilge. “Initiatives such as these, while they may seem tokenistic, actually play a very important role in helping migrants and refugees to assimilate and integrate into Irish society and culture,” says Sorcha Grisewood who interviewed those involved in the collaboration:

Devotion to the community emerged as one of the strongest features during Moyross's #BuildOurRoad campaign.

We're one week down. Listen to editor Allen Meagher's take on the changed landscape.