CORRYMEELA

Recently I was in Northern Ireland as a volunteer for a year at the Corrymeela Community. Corrymeela Community was founded by Ray Davey who was a prisoner of war in Dresden and witnessed the Dresden Bombing. Ray felt called to establish a centre in Ballycastle and his vision was to create an open village, where people of all faiths and backgrounds could come together and learn to live in a community.

Northern Ireland as a country had its own share of ups and downs. Many people lost their lives. After the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, figures on physical violence has reduced. However, violence is still lingering in other forms. Wars with guns have come to an end but peace is still a distant star. People still seem fractioned over especially between two communities, Catholic and Protestant or Irish and British or Unionism/Loyalism and Nationalism/Republicanism.  

In the midst of the ongoing conflict and division, Corrymeela has been acting as a catalyst for change. It works with different individuals, groups, politicians, and other stake holders trying to plant some seed of hope and peace. Its main office is in Belfast and the residential centre is located in Ballycaslte, a wonderful calm place next to the sea. The center hosts groups with different goals and objectives where building peace is the one of the core values. It hosts a wide range of groups like reconciliation groups, respite groups and reflective learning groups where I worked with them in different capacities as a volunteer. Alongside the groups, I also worked in the Kitchen and Housekeeping.

Corrymeela Ballycaslte is extended around six acres of land with three major living sites, Main House, Davey Village and Coventry. The Main House and Davey Village are open for the groups at the center whereas Coventry is only for the volunteers working on the site. Except that, there is Tara Tavern where Arts and Crafts and Play Room are situated. The rest of the area is an open field.

Every year around 7000 individual visit Corrymeela including groups and 400 volunteers come to support the ongoing work of Corrymeela. Volunteers are divided in different categories. Volunteers serving for a year are called One Year Volunteers, midterm volunteers for 3 months, extended midterm volunteers for more than 3 months, short term volunteers for few hours to few weeks and summer volunteers. Except these there are also office volunteers. Volunteers live together in Coventry and the age can be varied as Corrymeela accepts volunteers of different age. I had a wonderful year of my life as a One Year Volunteer at Corrymeela, where the people were so supportive and positive. There was always someone around you to help when you needed.  I had the opportunity to learn the true meaning of hospitality along with the skills of being a good facilitator. Working there has provided me a good taste of how it feels to work with groups, be it a child group or a university group.

Corrrymeela is a small place but it gives you opportunity to meet people from around the world and share a wide range of knowledge and experiences. The variation of English dialect at one small place is just an amazing experience. Corrrymeela also hosts international groups. One of the examples of international exchange would be the one year volunteering program where 12 individuals from around the world are selected to work and leave as a team for a year at the center.  This is a place where you can easily experience the world just being inside the boundary of 6 acres. You can see people of different race, different faith, no faith, different nationality, different gender, different perspective, and different dialect along with some similarities as well which totally symbolizes the world in a smaller version. Hence, I would like to call this place, A Smaller World.