Eglinton 'Direct Provision Centre' Galway- A Place of Hope & Friendship.

I would recommend everyone to read in full the very informative article by Stephen Corrigan in the Galway City Tribune newspaper that finally and publicly tells the truth about the Eglinton #DirectProvision Centre in Salthill Galway. It will be an eye-opener to those that have never been inside its doors and those who are afraid of such centres being built in their towns and neighbourhoods.

For far too long there have been rumours and false stories being spread about the Eglinton such as that a nightly curfew is imposed on residents, that there are no facilities, that no proper selection of foods is served, that staff and management are indifferent even hostile to residents etc. 
But these myths, based on the portrayal of the place being some sort of ‘inhumane’ prison camp, are an insult to both the people who work there and to those who live there.. As someone who has volunteered there almost on a weekly basis since 2004, I know most residents of the Eglinton over the years have recognised it as a place of sanctuary, of friendship and of community. So many of them tell me over and over again that Ireland provides a haven of peace far from the place of violence, racism, sectarianism, hatred, oppression, gang warfare, poverty or exploitation that their homelands have become; and that the Eglinton serves as a wonderful place of transition towards a better life for them and their families.

There is no doubt that this premises is indeed an old hotel that could do with a considerable injection of funding for a major overall renovation; that its owners (who I have never met in my 15 years there as a volunteer) make a nice profit from government grants; that personal living quarters are small with often up to three single people sharing rooms; and that the asylum-seeking process drags on for far too long leaving its applicants in a state of limbo. 
But the facility has a wide range of onsite facilities including a fine canteen, a state of the art pre-school, a community organic garden, a coffee bar, a function room for events such as Christmas (Santa's grotto for the kids) and birthday parties, an outdoor play area, and a computer room. Volunteers and residents will next weekend work together on completing a library. There is also a homework club for children, regular offsite activities for young and old, medical support and a weekly meeting every Friday evening where staff, residents, volunteers and support agencies get together to discuss issues, educational and recreational programmes as well as problems impacting on the lives of the Eglinton community. People from outside call every day to drop off gifts and meet residents. Whilst so many current occupants of the Eglinton are well known across Galway as volunteers in a range of city NGOs, from sporting to religious to environmental. 
One of the key strengths of the Eglinton is the high level of respect and friendship that exists between management (led by Patrick Mcgovern), staff and residents. It feels at times as if they are one very big family. A good example of the high esteem that staff are held in is that former residents regularly call in for a social chat with front line staff such as Carole Raftery.

The opening of such centres can actually benefit neighbourhoods. But of course local communities need to be consulted well in advance and local residents need to be brought to existing centres to see at first hand what they are like and how their occupants view them.

I wish all my friends at the Eglinton peace, friendship and prosperity for 2020

Trump's Ban, Palestine & My Galway Workplace.

Recently my friend Ihab Salawdeh gave a highly illuminating talk on his homeland of Palestine as part of our institute’s “My Country” series. The idea is for staff/students working at the Insight Centre for Data Anlaytics to present informative but light-hearted overviews of their country to their colleagues. With over 30 nationalities represented at our university research centre, we have had some excellent insights into places far and near. 

The jovial Ihab introduced us to a Palestine that not too many outsiders are aware off; a land where, in spite of Israeli military occupation and colonial settlements, is rich in natural beauty, culture and history. The inhabitants of the Holy Land are proud of their ethnic cuisine, folk dances, vibrant musical heritage, traditional dress, scenic hillwalking routes, churches, mosques, synagogues as well as ancient Roman/Greek/Jewish and Byzantine ruins. Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem are great world centres of tourism and religious pilgrimage.

Thinking about Ihab’s talk and the ‘United Nations of Galway’ that is my research institute at NUI Galway, I have come to the conclusion that Trump’s decision to ban travel to the USA for refugees and people from seven countries that have majority Muslim populations will have enormous and immediate negative ramifications not just socially, economically and politically but also scientifically.
Some of the researchers at our university centre are respected scientists from Syria and Iran who often as part of their work attend research conferences in the USA and elsewhere. America is now off limits to them and the research community of Galway, Ireland, Europe and the world will suffer as a result.
Trump will I feel extend the ban to other countries with Palestine probably at the top of the list.

With Trump promoting his newly discovered Christianity (of the conservative strand) and his support of American business entrepreneuralism, I should remind him that Steve Job’s father was Syrian and that the family of Jesus Christ fled to Egypt as refugees to escape probable death at the hands of a despotic ruler.

Trump is bringing a coldness and darkness to a United States that has such a proud bright history of welcoming immigrants escaping religious, racial and cultural persecution.

Aleppo: Lessons from Beirut.

The two photographs above are not some of those being shown a lot recently of Aleppo past (beautiful) and present (ruins). Rather they show Beirut as it is now (top) and as it was (bottom).

The horrors being endured by the peoples of the Middle East seems to be only getting worse. In the last days of 2016 and the first days of 2017, bombings of civilian areas, massacres of unarmed men. women and children as well as forced population movements continue unabated.  Yemen, Iraq and Syria are turning into wastelands. The scenes on our television screens of Aleppo showing miles and miles of streetscapes lying in ruins are reminiscent of Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden at the end of World War Two. We have all seen the photographs of Aleppo then (glorious) and now (desolation). These images could also come from other Syrian cities – Homs, Deir ez-Zor, Daraa…
Promises of a better future and a return to the normality before the men with their guns, tanks and bombs came seem to be an impossible dream.
But there is hope that this nightmare will end.

Only ten years ago, Beirut was synonymous with death and destruction. Once known as the Paris of the East, civil wars and military invasions from 1975 onwards reduced the Lebanese capital to rubble. Armed militias, military checkpoints, air bombings, kidnappings, sectarian killings, religious conflicts and foreign occupations transformed the city and countryside into a nightmare world reminiscent of scenes from the film Mad Max
A few months ago, I travelled to Lebanon to teach coding to Palestinian and Syrian  refugee teachers as well as to students in Lebanese schools.  In a country of only 4+ million citizens, there are over 2 million refugees mainly from Syria. This is a putting a huge strain on an already fragile Lebanese society. A national political deadlock of 29 months was only ended in November when the post of Presidency was finally filled. Mounds of waste were highly visible on inter city roadsides and in front of major buildings as a result of what many Lebanese say is due to endemic political corruption. The garbage crisis is so bad that there is a fear that it could contaminate the whole of the Mediterranean Sea.
Yet is spite of the past and present problems, Lebanon still inspires me and fills me with grounds for optimism.
The capital city is being rebuilt. Hotels are welcoming foreign tourists. Couples kiss, hold hands and share romantic moments together in public places. Families cycle along the seafront. Unaccompanied women drive cars, walk the streets, socialise together. The cafes and bars are full of young people. The streets around the American university are awash with students of both sexes and of different cultures. Mosques and churches exist in relative proximity. Public museums, galleries and hotels welcome visitors. No other country has done more to welcome refugees than Lebanon.
All of this takes places in what was until very recently a brutal urban battleground. Of course this is not to ignore the serious social problems that still exist. Women complain of experiencing sexual harassment on the streets; the refugees often live in cramped poor neighbourhoods; corruption and political patronage are talked about openly; and the urban geography is based along religious and ethnic lines.

But the most important thing is that Druze, Christian, Shia, Sunni, atheist, Armenian are living and mingling in the same city with lines slowly blurring as time moves on.
In spite of the fragility of Beirut society, it offers a possibility of a return to the past for the Middle East. For this region that was the cradle of civilisation never belonged to one faith, one people or one ideology. For thousands of years its cities were always mixed, always cosmopolitan.
I sincerely hope to be given the opportunity to once again work in Lebanon as part of the ambitious and highly beneficial 'Refugee Code Week' learning initiative.

'Galway Goes Live’ in Istanbul

Over the last few months I have taught volunteer mentors across the Middle East, as part of the Refugee Code Week (RCW) initiative, without leaving Galway. For thanks to the power of SAP Webinar, I now give live workshops and lectures to people all over the world from my own city. As a result of this state-of-the art video conferencing software, I was actually lecturing (in a virtual sense) in Brazil during the Rio Olympics!

In spite of its misuse by so many of our fellow man, modern technology can be a wonderful force for good, bringing joy and positive benefits to the world. None more so that ‘webinars’.

Over the weekend. I provided two training workshops to the students of ISIK University in Istanbul in advance of them mentoring to Syrian refugee children living in Turkey. There are over 2.5 million Syrians in this country, victims of a war that is becoming ever more brutal.
Photograph shows students in Istanbul watching the screen which I am controlling from Galway.
I have to thank most sincerely Professor Rabia Karakaya Polat for encouraging her students to support this learn-to-code project, to Elie Laurence Karam and Frank Falvey of SAP for facilitating the webinars and to Claire Gillissen, Batoul Husseini, Ibrahim Khafagy and Bernard Kirk for setting up and maintaining RCW.
As you know, I also work 'on the ground' in countries such as Turkey and Jordan. Which is of course my favourite method of teaching!

Working in the Al Za'atari Syrian Refugee Camp in northern Jordan.

Diary Entry One:

A few weeks ago, along with my good friends Nuala Allen, Aphrodice Foyo Mutangana, Mark Tate-Smith, and Bernard Kirk, I was based in Jordan as part of the SAP Corporate Social Responsibility Galway Education Centre & UNHCR programme to train young educators in computer coding so that they themselves can teach children and teenagers.
We were based at the Al Za'atari Syrian Refugee Camp in northern Jordan. It is the second largest camp in the world.
30% of the camp's Syrian residents of over 80,000 are children of school age. Half of them do not attend any of the nine schools in the camp because they work in nearby farms or elsewhere. Families need incomes. So as refugee adults are not legally allowed to work, parents often had to get their sons and daughters to take up work wherever they can. Child labour is a reality.
NGOs onsite and Jordanians are encouraging additional foreign aid to be used to create jobs that do not take work away from Jordanians and thus in the process allow all children in the camp to stay in full-time education.
We as volunteers are part of this initiative to upskill young people so that they might have a positive future.
But all the Jordanians and Syrians that I am working with are true angels doing their very best for people in a country that is one of the poorest in the Middle East.
Next month, I will be back in Africa once again under the Africa Code Week programme, another great SAP initiative spearheaded by the visionary Claire Gillissen.

 

Diary Entry Two: My Students: Innocent Victims of War.
Photograph shows students at my all-day coding workshop this afternoon in the Al Za'atari Syrian Refugee Camp.
These wonderful young men and women come mainly from the Daraa district of Syria.
If they had stayed in their homeland many of the people smiling at you would not now be alive.
They fled with their families to escape war, persecution and death; their educational studies, careers and dreams shattered in the process.
Thanks to the generousity of the Jordanian people as well as dedicated volunteers and funds from the United Nations, the EU and NGOs/governments from Norway, Japan, Kuwait, Britain, USA and many other countries, they hopefully will be able to believe in themselves once again, to have children, jobs and to lead long, peaceful and happy lives in Syria or in some other place.

Man's inhumanity to man (& it is very rarely women) always saddens me; killing a human being purely because of his/her race, religious belief, ethnicity or social class is pure evil. Sadly this barbarism is on the rise again in the 21st century.
After my classes finished today, I went to the camp perimeter to look over at Syria in the distance (only 10kms away) and I counted my blessings that I have been given an opportunity by SAP/GEC to play a small part in helping these people, who did not ask or want to be refugees torn from the country that they love, to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
This hope was reinforced by the fact that my co-mentor today was my good friend Aphrodice Foyo Mutangana.
Aphrodice is from Rwanda where I worked a few months ago as part of Africa Code Week. Whilst there I witnessed at first hand a country that had arose in a few short years from the ashes of an apocalypse to become, at many levels, a beacon of sunshine for a whole continent.
In 1994, over 800,000 people were butchered to death in the Rwandan genocide, a crime of unparelled butchery carried out by neighbour against neighbour, citizen against citizen. But today it has adopted a policy of reconciling genocide victim and perpetrator; has implemented a programme of 'community togetherness' that is possibly the best in the world; promotes women's rights, technology empowerment, sustainable economic development and reforestation as well as re-introducing once extinct wildlife to its countryside.
If this central African nation can rebuild after such a devastating human tsunami, the Middle East can become a peaceful region of cultural and religious diversity and tolerance.
My work as part of a team of enthusiastic visionary tech-savvy men and women has still much to give to the inhabitants of Africa, Middle East and Ireland.

 

 

Diary Entry Three: Residents Helping Each Other.
Our volunteer group spent the first few days in the Zaatari refugee camp providing computer coding workshops to teachers and students all of whom were forced by war to give up promising careers and jobs in Syria to flee to the safety of Jordan.
But it was the following day that was for me a true epiphany. For we could then truly enjoy the fruits of our labour as we watched the young men and women, that we had mentored, enthusiastically take on the task of teaching coding to the children of the camp on a one-to-one or one-to-two basis..
From early morning until early evening on that day 'our students' transformed what we had taught them into a subject that excited the interest and imagination of the children in their care.
Survivors of an ongoing brutal conflict that is destroying their homeland and their people, they have shown how, even in the darkest hour, the light of humanity can still shine through and that everyday life has to continue

The Boy on the Beach

In a week when parents in Ireland and elsewhere are happily bringing their children back to school after the summer holidays, it is soul-shattering to see the body of three year old Alan Kurdi washed up on the shores of Bodrum in Turkey.
He drowned, along with his five-year-old brother Galib, mother Rehan, and eight other refugees, yet more victims of money-worshipping traffickers many of whom come from the same countries of the people that they are treating as nothing more than commodities.
Galib should have been going to school this morning accompanied by his brother Alan and mom. 
Alan's family left their home in the city of Kobane as they, like millions of other Syrians and Iraqis, were forced to flee a new terrifying evil that has appeared in the Middle East, devouring and brutalising everything in its path. Islamic Caliphate (aks Daesh) and other religious fundamentalist groups such as Al Nusra are committing massacres and ethnic cleansing on a scale rarely seen for centuries.
Like apocalyptic scenes from the movie 'Mad Max', the world has been turned upside down as we daily see on our television screens, villages and towns across Syria and Iraq that only a few years ago were peaceful settlements, now witness the cancerous ISIS  crucify Christian children; gang rape and murder female lawyers and doctors; throw gays to their deaths from high rise buildings; establish slave markets populated by Yazidi girls and young women to be sold off as sex slaves; bomb schools and marketplaces; behead Shi’a soldiers, triumphantly hold aloft the heads of female Kurdish fighters; parade caged Kurdish Peshmerga through streets lined with jeering crowds and burn alive a caged Sunni Jordanian pilot.
This evil did not appear from nowhere. The US invasion of Iraq destroyed not only the state’s infrastructure, but destroyed also a tolerance between religious communities in many parts of the region providing the environment for a brutal fanaticism to flourish. Brainwashed by Imans promoting the intolerant strand of Islam known as Wahhabism that is prevalent in Saudi Arabia; funded and armed by wealthy religious fanatics amongst the Saudi and Gulf Arab elite; supported by the Israeli, American and Turkish regimes due to their common hatred of the secularist Assad state, the policy of ISIS and other similar groups is simple - eliminate the large indigenous Christian, Shia, Alawite, Druze, Bahai and Jewish populations of the Middle East many of which date their ancestry back thousands of years. In the process atheist, secularist and gay people have been butchered all in the name of a supposedly  all-merciful Supreme Being. Ancient pagan temples, Christian churches, Palmyra and Nineveh are being bulldozed and dynamited in the cradle of civilisation. The rich history and varied cultures of the peoples of the Middle East is disappearing before our eyes.
Millions of refugees have a right to return home. But that never happen whilst Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Gulf States are allowed to dismember Syria for short term political gain. They have let the Genie out of the bottle; the onus is on them to put it back.

Gaza: World's Largest Concentration Camp

Gaza: where 1.82 million people are squeezed and imprisoned in a sliver of land; the descendants of people forced there as a result of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli military from 1948 onwards.

Gaza: the world's largest concentration camp

Gaza: besieged by land, sea and air by Israeli military forces for seven years, over twice as long as the Nazi siege of Leningrad.

Gaza: where today the people that stole their homes and lands can gather together to sit out on deck chairs, enjoy the sunshine, joke with friends and have a nice cold beer or two on a balcony or rooftop whilst looking out towards those poor unfortunate refugees who once lived in their neighbouhood as they are being mercilessly bombed with the latest high tech weaponry.

Gaza: where if I was a Palestinian living there, I would find it hard not to fire rockets at the illegal occupiers and colonists of my grandparents home especially when I see no future for my own children.

Gaza: Today's Warsaw Ghetto.