A SIGNIFICANT cross-community initiative dealing with the legacy of violence and backed by EU funds has been launched in Belfast.
Healing Through Remembering (HTR), which holds conversational workshops involving those who suffered during the conflict, unveiled it new outreach programme Whatever You Say, Say Something.
The two-year scheme, backed by the EU’s PEACE III funds, will facilitate people in telling their stories from the Troubles in the hope that issues relating to the violence can be engaged by people from all backgrounds on both sides of the Border.
Kate Turner, director of HTR, told The Irish Timesyesterday's initiative followed a successful pilot scheme that helped uncover its potential value for a significant number of people.
“The idea is that people can contact us and we can set them up with trained facilitators to engage in conversation,” she said.
“These facilitators will also be skilled up to work with others. The idea is that if there is a hunger there for people to have this range of conversations then we can enable them and resource that.”
She added: “Dealing with the past is something we need to do to build a better future. We can help people in a way that feels safe and suits what they need to talk about.”
She praised the ability of the scheme to help people at community level, adding that its “bottom- up” approach could complement state efforts at dealing with legacy issues, which adopted a “top-down” approach.
The initiative was being made available at local level across Northern Ireland and beyond.
Healing Through Remembering was being driven by its membership and wider society, she said. “We could be in a position after two years to make recommendations to other bodies.
“Indeed we could make suggestions as we go along the way as well. We will learn from what people say to us.”
Joe Blake, one of the initiative’s trained facilitators, said it was important that those who experienced the violence “should be allowed to talk and to express themselves in their own ways”.
He said the outreach was not designed to be prescriptive in any way. “We would not be taking the lead and saying to people ‘This is what you do’.”
He added: “We are not going to go and do the commemoration, we are not going to go and collect the stories. We will hear stories and then suggest to people that this is their way of dealing with the past.” The value of the exercise lay in telling the story to one another, he said.
“It will be the first conversation. These conversations will allow the difficulties of living through conflict to be acknowledged and for experiences to be shared.
“Some people have blocked out experiences, even everyday ones, and have difficulty in discussing them, despite a desire to do so.”