Ulster Project Delaware is returning to the First State this summer, and the organization is currently seeking host families for the teenagers who will be visiting from Banbridge, Northern Ireland.
Amanda Finn, the executive director of Ulster Project Delaware, said they are expecting 14 Catholic and Protestant teenagers from Northern Ireland to arrive in late June. So far, seven families have been accepted as hosts. Ulster Project would like to secure hosts for the remaining slots as soon as possible.
Host families should have a teenager between the ages of 14-16. The American children would be able to participate in all of the activities, including local events, trips to nearby cities and the talent show. The Northern Irish teens would need transportation and food, Finn said. The religious faith of the host family doesn’t matter.
Ulster Project Delaware began in 1976 as a project of Pacem in Terris in response to the violent clashes between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The idea was to teach the teenagers leadership skills that they could take home and be peacemakers. It is the longest-running such program in the United States. Although “the Troubles” — the violence between people of different faiths — have largely subsided, Finn said the project still has value.
“The thing that has always impressed me about the program is that it recognizes that teenagers have the ability to be leaders in their communities,” she said. “The American kids, while we don’t have the same kind of prejudice between Protestants and Catholics here, we certainly have a need for young people to learn about acceptance and getting along with people who are different than them and learning to be leaders.”
A lot of the bad feelings between Catholics and Protestants still exists in Northern Ireland, she said. As recently as two years ago, the parents of one Northern Irish teenage boy told him not to let his grandparents know that he was staying with a Catholic in Delaware, Finn said.
“In some ways because it’s underlying, it makes it even more important to kind of talk about these issues so that it doesn’t continue as this next generation grows up,” she said.
Finn said the organization would like to have all of its host slots filled by March 1. For more information about Ulster Project Delaware, go to www.ulsterprojectdelaware.org or email applyupd@gmail.com.
