REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON HER VISIT TO THE SHORT STRAND COMMUNITY CENTRE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON HER VISIT TO THE SHORT STRAND COMMUNITY CENTRE FRIDAY, 16 FEBRUARY, 2001
Thank you for your warm welcome and my thanks to Maura Magee for the kind invitation to visit the Short Strand Community Centre.
It is hard to think of the Short Strand without thinking of a people who have known hardship, suffering, fear and loss. It is also hard to think of Short Strand without thinking of people who, instead of wringing their hands, have rolled up their sleeves and continued to build up community, build up resilience and hope with a determined focus on creating a better future.
The community sector has provided vital support through many years of horror and violence in this city. Now there is a new political dispensation based on the Good Friday Agreement but built on the huge will of the people for peace, justice and equality. The vigorous changes demanded by the Peace Process, are demanded not just of politicians but of everyone and now communities need to strengthen and develop their capacity to participate in a new social and economic reality. There is no big miracle that brings a brighter future overnight but there is another kind of evolving miracle that can be stitched together little by little, bit by bit, person by person, community by community. I know that is what you are doing here, helping each other through these times, coping still with the hurts of the past, making the present as neighbourly and caring as you can, preparing yourselves to get the most from what the future offers.
The years of conflict have meant that so much individual human and collective social potential was wasted, thrown away. Lives that could have and should have blossomed in a supportive, encouraging environment were thwarted by the bitter legacy of sectarianism and exclusion. Now there are new choices, real choices to cease being spectators, to become participants, to become the people who shape their own future and the future of their country. This is surely a time of fundamental transformation.
The promise of peace will only be fulfilled through widespread active participation in the process of building a peaceful democracy based on foundations of mutual respect, tolerance and inclusivity. Every inch of progress towards peace was ultimately achieved through the strength and courage of those who held this community and others together during 30 years of violence and bloodshed. Somewhere in the midst of all of that horror they found the space to start developing the capacity of their local communities to cope with a process of change. They overcame fear and suspicion to build links with neighbours from the other side of the sectarian divide. In doing this they refused to become the victims of change and instead empowered themselves to direct change within their communities.
Here in Short Strand as elsewhere the determination of volunteers, schools and community groups has harnessed local energies and put them at the service of the young people, the marginalised and the long-term unemployed, strengthening the individual and through them strengthening the community, making it confident in itself, its people, its future.
That future has to see this place as a vibrant, comfortable, relaxed participant in a modern, knowledge-based economy in a modern peaceful, democracy.
This new community centre was born out of your shared commitment to that future and out of your faith in each other, your pride in your own place and people. Every healthy community needs people to help it grow, develop and become confident through motivating and harnessing its greatest resource - the talent of its own people. You are fortunate here that you have great community builders, people prepared to go to the meetings, harass the funders, develop the plans, do the work week in and week out, year in and year out. They do it, not for thanks, or recognition but on a day like this they deserve both. If the work was not done, if we would not have this place to celebrate. If Short Strand was simply a collection of houses inhabited by random individuals who shared nothing in common what a terrible loss that would be. Instead you have a shared community memory, many stories, some good, some bad which bind you together, you are a large family that cares and shares and builds together.
Through your work in this new community centre you provide the tools of change to every member of your community. Within your grasp is the historic opportunity to overcome the fear of change and become its master. I have no doubt at all that you will succeed.