Bready community organisation receives £300k funding windfall

A BREADY-based community organisation has received a windfall of over £300,000 to help with ongoing peace initiatives.

The Bready and District Ulster Scots Development Association, which works in conjunction with the North West Cultural Partnership (NWCP) in Derry, were awarded a total of £301,761 as part of the International Fund For Ireland’s (IFI) Peace Impact Programme.

Brian Dougherty, CEO of the NWCP, was over the moon at the windfall. He said, “The IFI’s Peace Impact Programme has been extremely generous in recent years with their funding towards what we are doing here in conjunction with Bready. We have a cultural cross-border and cross-community ethos here at the NWCP and the IFI have always been supportive with what we are trying to achieve.”

The money received will go towards funding a two-year programme of cross-cultural and community activism.

Explaining the agenda going forward, Mr Dougherty added, “We have two workers on the ground working with those marginalised… one rural and one urban, implementing programmes to enrich communities and bring them together through a number of elements.

“Our work has seen bandsmen take part in St Patrick’s Day parades in Dublin in front of the Taoiseach and dancers from the Sollus Highland Dancing group based in Bready dance in Collins Barracks, as well as the Prime Minister in Downing Street. (We’ve) seen loyalist bands and Irish dancers collaborate and a series of important programmes implemented.”

Detailing the programmes, Mr Dougherty concluded, “We have the ‘Get Real’ programme which takes a layman’s approach to community development, allowing young people the opportunity to take on a more proactive role within their community; ‘Envisioning the Future’ which has worked with bringing people form a Protestant background to people from other backgrounds through cross-border work also involving the Shared Island Initiative; a Rural Women’s Project and an ongoing relationship with New York-based Hofstra University who send a delegation here each year, with conferences and field trips to various places.”