Press Releases21 Nov 07

"Our Kind Of People" Exhibition - The Road To Success

After years of being associated with loyalist paramilitaries, the Rathcoole estate in Newtownabbey is about to display another side of life.

A four-day exhibition highlighting the success stories of people born and brought up in the area is to be held at Rathcoole Youth Centre. Called “Our Kind of People”, it will document the life stories of 85 people.

Some of the participants still live in Northern Ireland while others have forged successful careers in countries around the world. They include the former Northern Ireland and Manchester United footballer Jimmy Nicholl, the BBC sports commentator Alan Green, the playwright Gary Mitchell and George McKim, a former loyalist paramilitary who is now senior pastor of the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle.

The exhibition is being organised by the Church of Ireland’s Hard Gospel Project in conjunction with St Comgall’s Parish in Rathcoole.

It will be officially opened by North Belfast MP and DUP MLA Nigel Dodds at 12.30pm on Monday 26 November and will run until Thursday 29 November.

The exhibition will be open:

“Rathcoole has suffered from low employment and a poor take-up of training and third-level education for a long time. St Comgall’s, along with other churches in the area, are trying to highlight the difference that education and training has made in the lives of the people included in the exhibition” says Stephen Dallas, the Hard Gospel Project’s Northern Ireland officer. “We hope to inspire others to have a bigger vision of what is possible.”

The Hard Gospel Project was founded by the Church of Ireland to help counter sectarianism and racism, and to find fresh ways of developing a shared future in the Ireland of the 21st century.

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Stephen Dallas
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