Roe Valley Residents Association, Limavady, Northern Ireland

Limavady is a mixed community of Catholics and Protestants, 17 miles east of Derry/Londonderry. For over 20 years, Roe Valley Residents Association has led projects that bring the whole community together. In 2018, they partnered with Springboard on a project called 14-NOW, funded by Spirit of 2012. The project asked residents to identify activities that would improve their community, with a focus on increasing wellbeing and social connection and reducing isolation.

Events were a key part of what they wanted to do, and included a Halloween lantern parade and Christmas family lunch. As one parent explained:

“I think since the event has started to run I feel more community spirit. I didn’t know the people who are pretty much my next-door neighbours. We have never hardly spoke before or if I would have even passed them on the street, I wouldn’t have said anything. Now I’m getting to know people and it’s well to be able to put names to faces and know that there’s people out there who have become friends.”

Karen Campbell, Project Co-ordinator at Roe Valley Residents Association explained some of the approaches they had used to gain trust across sectarian divides:

“Using events proved to be an excellent strategy when engaging residents from right across the community. It was important to work at a grassroots level, in partnership with residents, to find common ground between both community backgrounds. From this, we were able to engage local people, providing events and activities that were enjoyable, memorable and offering that sense of community pride for all.”

As well as sectarian divides, the projects sought to address rural isolation. Karen explained:

“Roe Valley Residents Association worked on a strengths-based approach with the smaller, more rurally isolated hamlets across Limavady. Bringing together volunteers, providing appropriate training and identifying their skill set, we were able to empower local people in being able to effectively deliver community events. The development of quality community leaders delivering high quality events, led to an increase in momentum from local people willing to engage in further, more longer-term community activities.”

The project team made a concerted effort to collect both survey and focus group data to understand the impact of their events, with the support of independent evaluators InFocus. There was a significant increase in participants feeling proud of their contribution to the community, from 17% to 44% feeling “very proud”. The proportion of respondents agreeing that their community “is a place where people from different backgrounds get on well together”, increased significantly, with a baseline of 43% stating that they either strongly agree or agree at baseline, compared to 91% by the end of the project.