Integrated Education: A New Sense of Awareness
It was a meeting of minds and spirit when Bishop Riah and three Facilitate Global Directors met with Baroness May Blood. This formidable campaigner shared her experiences of working for 26 years to bring about integrated education in deeply sectarian Northern Ireland, even after threats to her life.
From a humble portable building with a handful of children, thousands were now benefiting with schools across the province. Not only had these schools changed children’s lives and perceptions of the other, but also the communities around them. Facilitate Global will work to twin these schools, with those in Palestine.
Bishop Riah shared his vision of Integratsia school, and how this could begin to bring a new sense of awareness to the troubled Middle East, with Christians, Arabs, Jews and Druze studying alongside one another, and being represented on the Board of Governors. We parted with the sense that two troubled regions, could learn from one another, and work together to offer an alternative future, one based on hope, not fear.