Overview from October 2020 – March 2021

Rural Community Network from October to March 2021 engaged in a wide range of virtual online workshops and programmes. People from right across the region, on a cross community, cross cultural, intergenerational basis engaged in our programmes along with many partners interested in promoting good relations and peacebuilding across rural NI. Over 35 people attended online training with Cara Friends on LGBTQ+ issues over the months of October and November, rural women from Mid Ulster engaged in a SELFIE good relations programme with NIRWN and a shared history course was completed with a group in Darkley, through Martin Snoddon, Northern Spring. Rural women engaged in Ordinary Women through ExtraOrdinary Times programme with Northern Spring and a number of rural participants from right across NI engaged in the Bloody Sunday Trust programme. We finished off an OCN Level 2 in Ulster Scots through Ulster Scots Community Network during this period, along with a cultural identity programme, Knowing Me Knowing You in partnership with Fermanagh and Omagh District Council Good Relations.

After Christmas along with the In This Together wellbeing programme rural women from across Fermanagh and Omagh engaged in a shared history programme Walking in Her Footsteps in partnership with Fermanagh and Omagh District Council Good Relations and we also successfully ran another shared history programme with Northern Spring as well as a dialogue programme focusing on the period 1912 – 1921 with the Junction. Overall it has been a very busy six months working during the pandemic on good relations but the impact of our rural work has been far and wide. We have reached areas, individuals and communities that we may never have reached only for using modern technology.”