CENTRE for CROSS BORDER STUDIES

The Centre was contracted by the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation (through Co-operation Ireland) to carry out the Immigration, Emigration, Racism and Sectarianism Schools' Project.

The project brought together nearly 300 children aged 9-14 from 12 schools - six Protestant and Catholic schools (upper primary and lower secondary) in Antrim and Londonderry and six Protestant and Catholic schools (upper primary and lower secondary) in Louth and Monaghan - to learn about the cultures associated with Protestantism and Catholicism and with the new immigrant communities who are becoming numerous in both regions. The Irish children are learning that they have something important in common with each other and with the new ethnic community children: they are all from societies which have seen large-scale migration.

The first year report and final year reports of the IERS School's Project, which began in September 2006, are available as pdfs at the bottom of this page.

Each school is involved in a cluster of four schools during the two years of the project: one Controlled (mainly Protestant) and one Maintained (mainly Catholic) school from Northern Ireland (Antrim and Londonderrry) and one Protestant and one Catholic school from the Republic of Ireland (Louth and Monaghan). Two four-school clusters are made up of primary schools, and one four-school cluster is made up of secondary schools. The project's first year report covers the preparation of pupil and teacher course materials, teacher planning meetings, cross-community workshops between twinned participating schools, and the three cross-border, cross-community 'residentials' which took place in the Share Holiday Village in Fermanagh and the Ulster-American Folk Park in Tyrone in spring and early summer 2007.

The final evaluation of the 2006-2008 IERS Schools project (by Peter McEvoy) which was managed by the Centre and coordinated by Marie Hoeritzauer. It brought together 300 pupils from 12 primary and secondary schools in Counties Antrim, L'Derry, Louth and Monaghan to learn about their own cultures and those of the new immigrant communites who have come to live in Northern Ireland and the Southern border region.