Over 500 community activists from loyalist and republican communities are to participate in a ground-breaking programme to tackle racism and sectarianism across Northern Ireland. Specialist Holocaust training providers will educate the volunteers who want to participate in the programme to help change racist attitudes within their local communities. The anti-racism training programme — The Thin End of The Wedge — which has received £1.5m in EU funding, was piloted last year in areas of Belfast where racism and sectarianism were problematic. It received governmental support after several months of racist attacks last year. In April more than 40 foreign nationalists were intimidated out of loyalist parts of Belfast over two weeks following violent clashes between Northern Ireland and Polish football fans. And in June over 100 Roma fled Northern Ireland after a spate of violent racist attacks in Belfast. Some of the families have since returned. Launched at Stormont yesterday by MP Nigel Dodds, the anti-racism programme, which will be delivered by the charity Forward Learning, includes City & Guilds accredited training and a cross cultural study visit to Krakow in Poland and the death camp complex at Auschwitz. Project developer Frank Higgins said the project is the first of its kind in the EU. He added that the project “teaches people not only how to recognise racist and sectarian beliefs but how to stop such attitudes whenever and wherever they exist.” Mr Dodds said the project is designed to tackle “one of the most important issues in our society today”.
Belfast Telegraph
