REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE LONG TOWER YOUTH AND COMMUNITY CENTRE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE LONG TOWER YOUTH AND COMMUNITY CENTRE, BRANDYWELL
It give me great pleasure to be here today on this special occasion - the opening of the Long Tower Youth and Community Centre. My thanks to Jimmy Melaugh and the committee of the Long Tower Youth Club for inviting me. I would also like to thank the members of the Christian Brothers Choir for their wonderful welcoming performance, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
My short tour of the centre has given me an insight into the very extensive range of activities and all under one roof. To each and every one of you who played a role in bringing this project to where it is today, I say well done. You can be justly proud of your achievement, your part in this success story.
The years have not always been kind to this City or to this parish of St. Columbs. You have known very hard times. Long Tower and the Brandywell have faced their share of the Troubles and at the same time you have had your own bitter experience of “unemployment”, “disadvantage” and “deprivation.” And yet the words which best characterise this community are dignity of spirit, resolve and most of all, courage.
The story of this centre, over the past 60 odd years since it was first founded, has been a story of dedication and service to the community. Through the years, many people and youth workers in particular, have worked tirelessly to develop and grow a wide and worthwhile range of projects and activities here, each designed to bring out the best in young people, to help them develop and realise their true potential, to stretch them physically and intellectually, to show them emphatically how valuable and worthwhile they are as human beings, to counter the cold winds of contempt and neglect which had helped create a landscape of poor opportunity.
To those unsung, unpaid, overworked volunteers I say well done. In every village, town, and city I visit I meet the same remarkable people time and again - volunteers who willingly give their time, talent, energy and enthusiasm to do something for someone else. I commend you for what you do and the way that you do it. But most of all I commend you for the “why” you do it. Why you drag yourself out on cold evenings from the fire and Coronation Street? Why you give up your weekends, your precious leisure time. Nobody makes you do it and yet you do it anyway.
There are two types of people, those who moan about the things that need to be done but wait for someone else to do them and those who get up, get out and do something about them, themselves. You are part of that great tradition in this country of volunteering and it is particularly apt to thank you in this year, the International Year of the Volunteer. Nothing you do is done for thanks, I know, but you are certainly entitled to the gratitude of the individuals you have helped and of the community which you helped to grow in strength, in self-confidence and in a new culture of achievement.
People like Brian McMenamin and Jimmy Melaugh and many, many more have given great service and they are part of a great tradition of community service handed on from one generation to the next, each making its own distinctive contribution as it lives through its own distinctive times. It is to your courage, resolve and hard work that this fine building stands testament.
The physical infrastructure in a community is important but so too is the emotional infrastructure. Your community has had to cope with many adversities and it has needed a great range of coping skills. It has needed to instil confidence and pride in its people, to open its embrace to its neighbours, building bridges across many historic misunderstandings. And it has done those things no matter how great the difficulties. From a deep wellspring of pride and determination, this community renews itself with each passing generation. Among the many signs of the generosity that lies at the heart of this place is the network of cross-community relationships established and nurtured with your neighbours from the Fountain and the East Bank, the wonderful Columban Festival hosted by this parish each year and the outreach to places as far away as Ballykeel and Taughmonagh to give Identity and Personal Development courses.
Today, the feast day of Saint Nicholas is a good day to gather to celebrate a caring community at work, doing the things we all take for granted but would be so impoverished without, binding us together with shared memories, bringing us together in hope. In this place people learn new skills, make new friends, have a bit of fun, work as a team, discover a talent they did not know they had, feel the joy of community approval on the day the team wins, experience the misery of defeat but the comfort of a defeat shared.
In this place you show the meaning of that lovely Irish saying Ní Neart go cur le chéile. Our true strength is only revealed to us when we work with others. It could be a metaphor for this island. We have never known an Ireland where the talents of all its people were fully harnessed and working together for the benefit of all. We have never ever known our own strength. But a day is coming soon when we will and with it will come vindication for all those here and elsewhere who used their lives well, to build up the individual and through the individual to build up strong, stoical, successful communities.
At this Christmas time I wish you all peace and contentment, good health and happiness, today and always.
Thank You