Northern Ireland — steered by history and steeped in tradition, much of it bloody — is starting to change, and the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky chapter of the Ulster Project is helping.
Every July the Ulster Project brings 12 Northern Irish teenagers aged 14 to 16 to Cincinnati for a month. Coming from both sides of the faith line, the teens are paired with host families whose children are the same age, sex and denomination. The goal is to plant seeds of tolerance, forging friendships in spite of religious and cultural differences.
Despite its mystical shroud of windswept moors and ruined castles, Northern Ireland is a place of strife rooted in nationalism and aggravated by religious prejudice that has become a matter of politics. Schools, youth clubs and friendships are dictated by religion; loyalties to the past run deep, often accompanied by guns, bombs and death certificates.
The teens visiting Cincinnati don’t disclose their last names to a reporter because of the possibility of repercussions back home.
The all-volunteer Ulster Project spread to Cincinnati in 1988. Since then, more than 350 teens have participated in the local program.
“It creates a whole new generation of people,” says Emma, 21, a Northern Irish counselor who was a teen participant in the Ulster Project in 1997.
“Without projects such as this, you don’t have the chance to mix in new social circles. It sounds so stupid because we have to come to America to meet them, but it works so well because you’re not at home. You don’t have your friends’ points of view, you don’t have your family’s point of view. You’re on your own and you have to make your own choices and form new opinions. And you bring that back with you, and people just look at you and go, ‘Ah, you know what? That’s right. They’re all people.’ What does it matter if they’re Catholic or Protestant or blue or green or whatever?”
The teens meet as a group almost daily for projects ranging from rehabbing old houses and staffing a day care center to mixed worship services and recreational outings.
“From surveys in the past, our teens enjoy the service projects and religious ceremonies as much as the trip to Kings Island, because they create this bond that’s so special they just want to be together no matter what they’re doing,” says Laurette Wenzel, the chapter president since 2001. “It’s incredible how these friendships grow. We literally have to pull the kids apart at the end of the month. That’s the worst part of the project.”
Only a week into the project, the teens are at ease goofing off with one anther and reminiscing about their last pool party — a novelty for the Irish teens; the July temperatures they’re used to hover around 58 degrees.
The host teens are already busy arranging to visit their newfound friends next summer.
“I just want to relive the experience,” says Marta Gruber, 15, of Cincinnati. “I got involved because I wanted to meet a lot of new people and to get something out of it about different cultures. It has opened up my views and opinions more, and I’m a lot less close-minded to other things.”
Nostalgia sets in as Wenzel flips through surveys from past participants, each dripping with heartfelt epiphanies.
“I think we bring the teens over at a great age,” Wenzel says. “All the teens leave here with spiritual growth and emotional growth, but it’s up to them how they apply it day to day.”
Jenny, 15, says there’s no doubt she’ll carry on the strides of the Ulster Project when she returns home.
“I’m having a good time, and with the people who are doing all the fights, why should they destroy what we’ve done to try and make friends?” she says.
The program is useful for Cincinnati as well as Northern Ireland, participants say.
“It teaches us to accept our differences, and it can do exactly the same thing for Cincinnati,” Emma says. “I know it’s not a perfect city, and it has its problems as well. Us being here just shows that to address our problems, this is what we have to do. It makes people look not only at our lives but at their own lives and any kind of prejudice which they hold themselves.”
Wenzel agrees.
“Any project that teaches tolerance, friendship, acceptance and conflict resolution has to benefit in some way,” she says. “Certainly in Cincinnati we need that.”
Northern Ireland, also known as Ulster, is living proof that people can change, according to Emma.
“As a country, we have come so far from what it used to be like,” she says. “That can be seen in so many ways, even as simple as urban development and shopping chains that never would have thought to come into Northern Ireland are now coming in. People are now willing to put money into the country because they’re not scared that their investment is going to be blown up. Every year more people experience this, so more people come home with new ideas and different things, and barriers do get broken down.” ©
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2003.
