Access
In October 10 pupils from RSD travelled to
Corrymeela, a community based centre in Ballycastle, along with
pupils from St. Patrick's Academy Dungannon, St. Josephs
Donaghmore and Cookstown High School for 2 days, with the aim to
quash ‘religious’ myths, while providing the opportunity for
pupils to get to know each other and mix in an open-minded
community, giving them the chance to express their opinions on
Northern Irish ‘ religion.’
From team building activities, making
masks, open group discussions, ghost walks around a local
graveyard at midnight (inc. real ghosts..) and from all the
laughs had, the trip proved to be very successful and enjoyed by
all, while teaching us that there is nothing ‘shockingly’
different with people from a different religion, apart from
protestants who apparently put their right sock on first.
Access 2009
ACCESS Day 1 (15/10/2009) - Cookstown Leisure Centre
The
first activity of the ACCESS group was to go to Cookstown
Leisure Centre and get to know the pupils from the different
schools. We got out of class at 12 o'clock and everyone was
slightly anxious as we didn't know what to expect. We got on
the bus with pupils from St. Patricks Academy Dungannon & St.
Josephs Donaghmore, on the way there the different schools sat
separately.
When
we arrived everyone sat around the room
in
their own school groups.
There wasn't much interaction between the schools but then a
person called Keira from
Corrymeela
organised some activities to get us interacting. We got put
into small groups with people from each school and did group
activities such as Dingbats which brought the group together and
and soon everyone was having fun. We then did an activity which
required us to discuss who we would like to live next door to
us, out of a list of people. Such as a doctor, a gay nurse, a
policeman, a politician, an ex-prisoner and a young Muslim.
This made us realise the prejudices we had as when we we're
asked to think about them and most of us imagined them being
male and when we found out more about them we realised that a
job title is not always indicative of a persons character.
We
then got to play a few more games and on the way home the
different schools were mixed and everyone was chatting and
looking forward to the next meeting. I think that the afternoon
was a very worthwhile experience and I am glad I applied.
Alistair Irwin