OBE recipient introduced children in Ardoyne to their counterparts in the Shankill

Lisa Bennett-Dietrich, CEO of Community Relations in Schools (CRIS) joined the likes of actor Damian Lewis, author Sir Salman Rushdie and Clare Balding in collecting their awards.

“It came as a complete surprise, but I hope it helps to shine a light on the peacebuilding work of CRIS,” said Lisa, who was honoured for services to Peace Education and Community Reconciliation in the Platinum Jubilee honours list.

The 43-year-old, who originally comes from South Armagh and now lives in Belfast with her family has been working at CRIS ever since completing her Masters Degree in 2002.

In the early days CRIS – set up by a group of teacher activists – facilitated contact between schools that would have been positioned, apparently irrevocably, on opposing sides of the community divide at a time when the Troubles were at their height.

Over the years they also spearheaded curriculum material to facilitate dialogue between pupils across all phases of education as well as training teachers to build Community Relations projects within their schools.

However, CRIS lost much of its funding in 2010 following a Department of Education policy change away from the Schools Community Relations Programme (SCRP).

It took years of hard work and support from new funders, including the Community Relations Council (CRC) to rebuild CRIS.

Part of that reinvention was to draw upon the experiences from their most innovative projects, some of which have since won awards and accolades and been lauded as an example of good practice in Community/Good Relations and also features in the Together Building a United Community (T:BUC) Strategy.

“We’ve flipped the focus over the last 12 years or so to work not only with children but also the adults using a whole school collaborative approach, with leadership training for school staff, principals and parents as key community stakeholders within schools,” Lisa said.

Lisa’s own work over the years has been focused on supporting families from Holy Cross Nursery in the Ardoyne and Edenderry Nursery in the Shankill whose schools had created a scheme buddying the children with their counterparts in the other community.

She admits she might well have left CRIS long ago due to sector burn-out, had it not been for the motivation and efforts of her team of colleagues and that ground-breaking project, which forged long lasting friendships between parents and carers on both sides of the Crumlin Road interface.

“This work can be tough, and I would have left CRIS a long time ago if it wasn't for what I was witnessing in Belfast and other localities we work with. I was seriously considering it, but for the hope I felt from working with Ardoyne and Shankill over these twenty years and seeing how when tensions rose within the community, quite the opposite happened within the groups.

“A core part of our programming involves providing safe spaces for dialogue about experiences of growing up and living through the conflict and the ongoing issues that cause tensions and fear across communities. I believe that the most hope lies in the places many would least expect to find it.”