12/06/2026
Yesterday, one of our Clothes For All homeless project volunteers provided a moment of hope, in the midst of the horror of this week. Our volunteer, who herself had been evicted from her home through sectarian violence decades ago, was able to use that experience to provide care, empathy and practical support for a young woman who had just been evicted from her home, due to the racist violence which has swept our city.
But, it’s been a horrible week. The horrific stabbing which sparked the protests, happened on the street which our Duncairn Centre is on. For many people, it triggered memories of the horrors of the Troubles, where over 600 people in this area lost their lives through violence. So, the reaction to the stabbing this week was visceral, the condemnation, rightly, total.
And the backlash has been horrendous. In an echo of what happened during the Troubles to people like our volunteer, we watched innocent men, women and children forced from their homes, this time because of the colour of their skin. People like Jason and Solomon, who share their story in Hannah Al-Othman’s powerful article in The Guardian, which is linked below.
At a deeper level it exposed a deeply uncomfortable truth: for all the progress, which we have made over the last 30 years, we are still a profoundly divided society, fragmented by a host of factors including race, religion and income. As our Director Tim Magowan says in this article in The Guardian, many of us are physically and digitally surrounded by people just like us, disconnected from people who are different to us and the deep divisions between communities which are often under the surface.
But in the middle of this, hope: our volunteer who was able to use the pain of what happened to her to provide help and hope to someone from a different community to her. She’s not alone: there’s a quiet movement of people like our volunteer, many impacted by conflict themselves, who are building relationships across divides, supporting others and creating a better future for all.
Socrates' brilliant insight, which we share in our Circle of Change peacebuilding programmes is that : ‘The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new’. That’s what our volunteer has done so movingly. That’s what the 174 Trust is doing everyday, as it supports thousands of people from different communities to live better together. That is the task ahead for all of us in Northern Ireland, who want to build a better future for all.
People in city’s minority ethnic communities speak of alarm as violence casts light on racism in Northern Ireland
