Friends of Africa & East African Youth Association Summer Scheme, July 2021 West Belfast.

For over 20 years Friend of Africa have been involved in supporting development projects and placing both short and long term volunteers with our partners across Africa. The Corona Virus pandemic which gripped Europe in March 2020 turned our world on its head and forced everyone to live and work differently.

Friends of Africa had to make difficult but necessary decisions which would result in the cancellation of our international volunteer programme in 2020. Whilst this was not taken lightly, Friends of Africa and other similar organisations knew this was the only way to keep ourselves and those we work with safe.

This is not to say we did not act, we did, however it required careful consideration and needed to be different to continue working in solidarity whilst Covid 19 restrictions were in place. Our membership refocussed and committed themselves to working harder for the communities they knew or had travelled to in the past. They engaged in meetings online, they sought support and listened to development and medical experts regarding the impact of the pandemic on the communities where FOA work and all the while maintained contact with our partners in Ghana, Tanzania and South Africa. Our “Covid 100k” fundraiser event was a great success and allowed us to invest over £40,000 into communities who were dealing with the emerging crisis on the continent of Africa.

Working at home over the past year has given us the opportunity to go further and accelerate some of the ideas our membership has been suggesting; what role if any can we play in the Black Lives Matter movement? How does an organisation like FOA become more inclusive and include the voice of the African community living in Ireland? Can we continue to be an advocate for the positives of international volunteering and at the same time accept the impact this has on our already fragile environment?

One by one over the past 16 months we have tackled these issues and made progress in all areas. One of the big questions for Friends of Africa was how to extend the solidarity we express with our partners in Africa to the growing African community in Ireland? Through networking with various individuals and groups and listening to the diverse African community in Belfast we settled on a plan – to facilitate a weeklong summer scheme for children and young people of African origin who now call Ireland home.

It is important to note that this idea came from and is owned by groups like HAPANI and the East African Youth Association. FOA’s role was to use our experience of working with young people and our connections locally to make it happen. The need we were told was great, the young people we are talking about are not in any way homogeneous, but the one area where there seems to be commonality is accessing youth services. The reasons for this are complex and varied and unfortunately a standard experience for many new arrivals from outside of Europe.

12 months later and today we are engaging with 25 young, energetic, passionate people aged between 7 and 14 who along with the encouragement of their peers and parents took the leap and joined the first ever Friends of Africa Summer Scheme held in West Belfast for a week. Speak to anyone who works on a summer scheme, and they will all tell you the same thing, they are as enjoyable as they are hard work, but what a week it has been! We continue to use our volunteering model and have recruited nine experienced volunteer youth workers who have given their all this week. The plan is to continue to work with the young people and their families and build on the legacy of the summer scheme. This will hopefully involve us supporting the participants in the next stages of integration. There is a lot of work to be done but for FOA this is a massive milestone – young Irish and African

adults working together to deliver a weeklong programme for children who call Ireland and Africa home and all happening in the heart of West Belfast. Small Steps together is our logo, but this feels like a big one.

This week would not have happened without the support of the following groups – East African Youth Association, HAPANI, Colaiste Feirste the Education Authority and Friends of Africa.