Community Dialogue | Who we are

Anne Carr was born and educated on the Ballygomartin Road in Belfast. She was Co-ordinator of the Women Together For Peace organisation from 1990 - 2001 and in that time developed early dialogue processes bringing women together both within and across communities, and organised a number of vigils aimed at highlighting the need for an end to violent action and the beginning of a process of peaceful engagement

She was involved in the early highlighting of the need for acknowledgement of and support for victims of the conflict including participation in the first working group which mapped the availability of this support and huge gaps which led to the establishment of the Bloomfield process.

She was the first elected Local Councillor for the Women’s Coalition and served on Down District Council for four years from 1996 – 2000.

She campaigned for increased participation of women in politics and public life in Northern Ireland including working towards the establishment of an inclusive Women’s Forum and the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition

She is a campaigner for integrated education and assisted in the establishment of the first parent-driven integrated primary school outside Belfast, All Children’s in Newcastle which opened in 1986. She was a founding parent, governor and director of the school and has just completed 14 years as chair of the Board of Governors.

Mark Chapman has done peace work in Iraq, Jordan, Palestine and Sri Lanka. He is a member of the Society of Friends and in recent years worked for the Friends out of their Belfast centre. During the late 1980s and 1990s he taught in London and before that worked in computers in Liverpool.

A Training Manager within Community Dialogue, Mabel brings extensive experience of Community Development work that spans over 20 years.

Her career began in London as a volunteer with the Terrence Higgins Trust in the late 1980’s helping those who were diagnosed with AIDs. She moved to Kettering when she became involved in Youth Development Work and in tackling drugs as a member of the Drugs Detached Team.

Mabel returned to Northern Ireland in the early 1990s and worked as a Childcare Worker before moving to Cookstown to become involved in Community Development projects.

Throughout this period Mabel worked voluntarily with a number of projects including people with disabilities at a local horse riding school, the Samaritans and her local Church.

In 2003 Mabel became a Senior Mentor Co-ordinator for the Job Assist Centres for West Belfast and Greater Shankill, targeting the long termed unemployed. In 2004 she became a Development Officer for the Employment Services Board for West Belfast and Greater Shankill bringing together those from divided communities.

She was a committee member for the Roma Edem European project for the Traveller community which was to promote Roma/Traveller Integration and Equal Treatment in Education and Employment.

Mabel has a daughter who is at University and this mirrors Mable’s ambition to ensure her own further personal development. Mabel is currently a Queen’s Graduate and is completing a Masters in Guidance and Counselling.

Esmee Gichuke, wife to A and mother of J K and L, lives and works in retirement in Lurgan Craigavon. Born and reared in N Ireland, she worked as a teacher and publishers’ editor, married and gave birth in Kenya many years before returning to N Ireland to the final puffs of the Troubles. Aghast at seeing the town centre smoking in bomb blast in Feb 1992, she became convinced that ‘dialogue’ and interaction were imperative. Lurgan too is slowly growing up in this respect.

Esmee has attended conferences and courses and initiatives concerning reconciliation and integration, particularly those run by the Irish School of Ecumenics. Involved with the Cedars initiative of Shankhill Parish. She has been a part of Lurgan Community Bridges, on which there always seemed to be harmony and smiles and gossiping together on the street and trips away together and an ability to look each other in the eyes. She has also been touched by the Community Dialogue initiative and has been a seasonal presenter on Banbridge Community Radio. For some time a part of Chrysalis Women’s Group. Journalistic contributions to The New Ulster and to Causeway Magazine. A member of the Craigavon Archaeology Society. Aspired to be a Peace Agent of her church.

She paints, sings, walks, talks with the able and willing, loves thinking and reading about the meaning of life, particularly about the meaning of life in Ireland which is home to warm-hearted and preoccupied people, oaks and granite rocks, swelling seas and gentle beaches, cold barren moorlands and shining emerald pastures.

Gary McKay has been Manager of the Job Assist Centres in the Greater Shankill area of Belfast since 2004. The key role of the organization is to encourage those out of work and economically inactive, to progress towards enjoyable and sustainable employment.

Prior to this Gary worked as Youth Development Coordinator for Ballysillan Community Forum and assisted in the coordination of the 'youth community empowerment partnerships,' effectively a 'lead-in' to the current CEP structures in North Belfast.

Gary was also one of the founding staff members of FASA (Greater Shankill Forum for Action on Substance Abuse,) a leading drug awareness organization in Northern Ireland. Gary spent 7 excellent years with the organization from 1996-2002 developing accredited training programmes for curriculum and community based delivery.

Keen on youth justice issues, Gary is a member of Greater Shankill Alternatives, a community based restorative justice project and has been a board member and secretary of the organization since it was established in 1996. Gary also worked for the Juvenile Justice system as a care worker based within Lisnevin JJC in Millisle during 2001-2003.

Gary is qualified to Masters Degree level in Community Youth work having recently completed a grueling 8 continuous years part time at the University of Ulster Jordanstown.

More importantly, Gary is married to Melissa and has two beautiful boys, Kian who is 7 and Jude who is 2. He is also a keen supporter of Liverpool Football Club and watched them lift the European cup in Istanbul in 2005.

Shane Molloy completed a post-graduate degree in Reconciliation Studies at the Irish School of Ecumenics on the Antrim Road in September 2007. He has long had an interest in cross-community and cross-border dialogue and has participated in many initiatives both through business and personal activities.

He is currently Chair of the Children’s Research Centre, Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Dublin and a member of the board of the Children’s Medical and Research Foundation, Dublin where he sits on the Finance sub-committee.

He is a Director of the Irish European Movement and a member of its North-South committee; he is also an Advisory member of the SDLP Election Review Group.

Previously, he was chair of Unilever Ireland and CEO, Lever Ireland; other involvements included membership of the National Executive of IBEC (Irish Business and Employers Confederation) and of the Joint North-South IBEC-CBI Council. He was also a member of the Fine Gael Strategic Review Group and ran as Fine Gael candidate in the 2004 local elections.

John McQuillan is a graduate of Queen's University Belfast. He attended university as a part-time mature student whilst still a shipyard worker in Harland and Wolff. He also completed a post-graduate certificate in Human Resource Development. This provided him with the skills and knowledge to conduct training needs assessments, and to design, implement, monitor and evaluate various training programmes primarily for the community and voluntary sector.

He comes from a trade union background and has been a local and regional delegate and a speaker at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions Conferences. He has been employed as a community development worker for 20 years. This work included a wide range of roles and work environments. Some of his past accomplishments include:

- He contributed to the establishment of Springboard - Ireland's largest organisation for the Wider Horizons Programme, which seeks to provide appropriate training for young disadvantaged people on a cross-border, cross-community basis, with a personal development overseas element .

- He conducted feasibility studies for training programmes in a range of sectors in France, Denmark, Germany, England, USA and Canada as Deputy Director of the Shankill Development Agency.

- His employment also took him to Tralee Co. Kerry where he was responsible for the recruitment and selection of young people in the innovative project the Jeanie Johnston. This project involved the full-scale reconstruction of a 19th. century Famine ship. The young trainees from Ireland, North and South, assisted in its construction and its maiden voyage to North America. More recently John has organised many cross-community projects in East Belfast including ex-combatants' programmes.

- Belfast Interface Project
- Inner East Belfast Community Forum
- Woodstock Partnership
- Woodstock Ethnic Minorities Support Network

Chris O'Halloran is Project Coordinator, Belfast Interface Project. He is a Professional Trainer, in Communication and Negotiation Skills. He was previously Inner East Belfast and Outer West Belfast Community Interface Community Worker in Roden Street and Ballybeen Community Development Projects in Belfast.

Kathy Wolff is Coordinator of the Newtownabbey Community Relations Forum, which was formed over 10 years ago. She has been working with them for two 2 years and before that had been a member for five years. She is a member of the Ballyclare May Fair, Treasurer of Ballyduff Community Group, a District Police Partnership member, Vice-Chair of the local Ballyclare Police Forum, chair of Kilbride Viewpoint (local women's group) and a member of Newtownabbey Women's Forum. She is a granny with four grandchildren. She was widowed 14 years ago. She sees Community Dialogue as the way forward.