About the project
Creating unity, amidst diversity.
What began 40 years ago as an effort to bring Catholic and Protestant teenagers together has grown into a powerful legacy of lifelong friendships, leadership, and mutual respect that continues to bridge differences today.
What it is
The Ulster Project takes teenagers from a divided town in Northern Ireland, pairs each one with an American teenager of the same age and gender, and gives them four weeks of ordinary life together.
There is no curriculum about the Troubles. There are no lectures about tolerance. The method is slower and plainer than that: shared work, shared meals, shared long days out, and facilitated conversations that let the difficult things get said once the group is ready to say them.
It is one of very few international peace programs where the young people themselves do the work rather than being an audience for it. The program director and counselors structure the activities intentionally making it a safe space for communication and belonging. What happens within them comes directly from the teens.
- 40summers in Utah
- 10teens each June
- 4 weekslate June into July
- 1 townOmagh, County Tyrone
How it got here
Four dates that explain the project.
-
1975
The Ulster Project begins
Founded as the Troubles worsened, on the premise that the conflict would outlast any ceasefire unless the next generation met each other first.
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1985
Utah joins
Salt Lake City hosts its first group. The chapter has run every summer since, which makes this the fortieth year.
-
1998
Omagh
A car bomb kills twenty nine people in the centre of the town the Utah chapter draws its teenagers from.
Why Omagh → -
Today
A generation born after
Teenagers born years after the Good Friday Agreement, who inherited the peace and also the separations nobody has undone.
The mark
Four rings, one cross.
The project's emblem is four interlocking rings laid over a cross. The rings are linked but distinct, which is the whole argument of the program in one image: nobody is asked to stop being what they are in order to be joined to everyone else.
It has been the mark of the Ulster Project across every chapter in the United States since the program began.
Creating Unity, Amidst Diversity
Come and see it work.
The clearest way to understand the project is to watch a summer happen inside your own house.