REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICAL OPENING OF RAPHOE RESOURCE CENTRE AND PLAYGROUP PREMISE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICAL OPENING OF RAPHOE RESOURCE CENTRE AND PLAYGROUP PREMISES FOR RAPHOE COMMUNITY
Is cúis mhór áthais dom bheith anseo libh inniu ag an ocáid spesialta seo. Tá mé buíoch díbh as an gcuireadh agus as an bhfáilte fíorchaoin a chur sibh romham.
I am delighted to join you this afternoon in Raphoe to open this wonderful Resource Centre and Playschool. I would like to thank Lorraine Porter, Secretary of the Playgroup and Danny Martin, Director of Raphoe Community in Action for their kind invitations.
This new centre is a place of your own, created to meet your own needs, and open today because of your vision and your care for each other. Community Projects like this always start with a good idea and no money. Many good ideas never get off the drawing board because the road to making them happen is too difficult and the commitment to tackle the journey is not there. No one will ever have that to say here in Raphoe, because though there were many obstacles along the road to today there were none this community was afraid to tackle.
Back at the beginning of this story The Volt House was unanimously pinpointed as the ideal location to house the resource centre and the determination of the community was matched by the generosity of the trustees, Dean Stephen White, Dr. James Mehaffey, Bishop of Derry and Raphoe and Archdeacon Rev. Scott Harte with whose help the house was leased with an agreement to purchase.
Every community needs a place like this to be an engine driving it forward, creating space for all the things that turn a bunch of random individuals into a dynamic, caring, sharing and achieving community. Not every community is blessed with volunteers who can pull together the patchwork of partners who can deliver such a place. I would like to pay tribute to those partners who helped this community to achieve its dream. EU Peace and Reconciliation Funds, Donegal County Council, the International Fund for Ireland, People in Need and the Department of Social and Family Affairs. It was the people of Raphoe who persuaded those partners that they were serious, that their project had great potential, that they were worth working with.
Your success tells its own powerful story of the sheer power of community endeavour, properly harnessed, intelligently used. That power comes from the spirit of care and kindness that resides in the hearts of neighbours and friends. From their big hearts comes an imagination which dares to plan a better future for each other and dares to hope that this community will have the best future yet.
It is not easy to harness that power, that passion and that imagination. There are plenty of people who want change but do not want to commit to the work it entails. You are blessed that you have great workers in the Raphoe Community in Action Group. It is hard slog, fundraising, filling grant forms, persuading funders, mobilising a community and it is not done for thanks but today they are certainly entitled to thanks for without them this place would still be no more than a good idea that never saw the light of day.
Instead it is a good idea made real- a credit to what is a relatively small community and a challenge to every other community that wants such a place and wonders how to go about it. Your story will give them heart just as this place already gives new heart to all the people who use it. Under this roof new memories will grow of days people enjoyed, of lives changed by simply being here, of a community with a wide embrace for each of its people. Congratulations to all those who made it happen. I wish you joy as you watch the unfolding of all the stories it will create.
It is my great pleasure to declare the Raphoe Community in Action Centre officially open.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.