North Belfast Developing Leadership Initiative Programme (DLI)

The North Belfast Developing Leadership Initiative is an experimental programme that seeks to develop local capacity by empowering people to creatively engage in decision-making processes that affect their everyday life.

Aspects of the programme are delivered in partnership with LINC and the Edward de Bono Foundation. The programme also aims to connect local experience to the wider political and democratic processes through sponsoring trainings, workshops and public talks.

The North Belfast Conflict Intervention Programme (CIP)

Political agreements and political progress are not sufficient in themselves to build confidence and trust within the divided communities of Northern Ireland and North Belfast. It is local people in local situations and them alone who can make peace. The challenge of the North Belfast Conflict Intervention Programme is to sufficiently develop the community’s skills base, self-esteem and confidence to understand that people will have to live side by side with people whom they distrust and fear. The quality of that relationship, which has been expressed violently for many years, will undoubtedly be enhanced when key individuals and influencers within communities and respected political constituencies can have the opportunity to engage in a process of sustained dialogue.

The North Belfast Conflict Intervention Programme is run in co-ordination with LINC Resource Centre and aims to intervene in interface conflict and address early warning signals at sectarian flashpoint areas. For some time there has been recognition, evidenced through the ongoing work of Intercomm and LINC, that a co-ordinated strategy to advance second track peace work must be developed. The intention of those in community leadership must be to initiate and support a second track public peace process that will underpin and serve as a healthy check on political progress at the grassroots level. The North Belfast Conflict Intervention Programme hence puts a firm emphasis on a bottom-up approach, emphasising the merits of a vibrant, co-ordinated second track process , in the north of the city.

The North Belfast Conflict Intervention Programme aims to promote peace building skills development as a means of community empowerment , to promote capacity building processes within the North Belfast community, to develop common approaches to socially divisive issues in the area, to establish a culture of learning around conflict intervention in North Belfast and also to bring local communities, government departments, key statutory bodies and academia into close contact. The main emphasis of the programme is on building capacity , relationships and structures that will deliver peace in the long term. For information about LINC, see www.linc-ncm.org