Organisations 'over the moon' with NI peace projects funding

"The day that I got the wee phone call and received the e-mail... I was jumping about the office just over the moon."

Those are the words of Jeanette Warke, who manages a youth club that just received more than €100,000 (£85,425) in funding from the Irish government.

The Cathedral Youth Club in Londonderry is one of 154 organisations who have received a share of almost €10m (£8.54m).

The money, announced on Thursday, is to support peace and reconciliation work in Northern Ireland.

The youth club Warke runs has received €132,468 over three years.

She said it has helped young people who feel isolated and are "in need of special care".

"The area in which we work and deliver our programmes is situated right on an interface and it can be prone to sectarian attacks quite often," she said.

She told BBC News NI that the money helps pay for staff who help improve good relations with neighbouring Catholic communities.

Ireland's Foreign Affairs Minister Helen McEntee said the fund placed particular focus on projects working to tackle violence against women and girls.

When awarding the funding, McEntee said: "I believe that we must support women affected by abuse if we are to see stronger cohesion in Northern Ireland.

Groups awarded funding include Clanrye Group who run a violence against women and girls learning programme, the Fall's Women Centre for their No Woman Left Behind project and the Playhouse in Derry, where an arts project addressing rising levels of violence against women and girls is to be developed.

Noelle Collins, from Belfast's Women's Aid said this funding was supporting the organisation's 14-week Journey to Freedom project for a third year.

"It's for women and looks at the effects of domestic violence, the effects on her, the children, the profile of a perpetrator, how she felt throughout that abusive time," Collins said.

"Domestic violence isn't orange and green so we bring women together from different communities and various ages.

"We have some younger women where there may have been integration in the past but some of our older women who lived during the Troubles, there might be a bit of mistrust there, but the common bond is the abuse they have all suffered."

Collins, who travelled to Dublin on Tuesday to meet the minister, said the money allowed the project to continue, provided rent for properties and could help provide travel for some women to get to and from groups.

Alison Blayney from the Kilcooley Women's Centre, said the funding was a "big game changer" for the organisation and will allow them to broaden their reach into more rural communtities.

Blayney said the organisation works with the most vulnerable people in society and "often they're the ones that maybe don't engage in the good relations type programmes, peace building, cross border".

Some of the funding is dedicated to helping community groups based at interface areas, such as the Cliftonville Community Regeneration Forum in Belfast.

Manus Maguire, who works with the organisation, said they would be putting the extra money towards a leadership programme for young people from both sides of the interface.

The difference, he said, is that the young people themselves have a hand in designing the course.

"The idea is to get them involved in something they'd be interested in doing rather than us coming up with something that won't interest them," Maguire said.

He said he wanted young people in the community to have "a different world view" that areas did not need to be divided in terms of religion or race.

In a statement, FactCheckNI said the funding will enable them to continue to help "people navigate an increasingly complex information environment with confidence".

"By empowering people to critically assess the information they encounter, our work supports informed participation in democratic processes, strengthens community resilience and contributes to more constructive public debate.

"We see this as an investment not only in trusted information, but in stronger communities and a healthier democratic society".

An IEF spokesperson said it will help them and the Council for Integrated Education to continue to "support the growth and development of integrated education across Northern Ireland".

"Integrated schools intentionally bring together children, staff and governors from all religious and cultural traditions within a single school community, where every day pupils can learn with, from and about each other."

A WAVE spokesperson said referrals to the victims support centre "have been going up consistently over the last five years or so and with it the demand for trauma support".

Established in 1982, the Reconciliation Fund has provided more than €67m (£57.2m) to over 3,200 projects in Northern Ireland.