EMU Trip to Belgium 2007
May 23rd, 2007 by S Hanna
The Messines Experience
” An EMU Trip with a Difference “
The international school for peace studies brings together students throughout the Island of Ireland to experience the principles necessary in establishing a peaceful, compassing, stable peaceful, society.
The program is not designed to change people’s politics, persuasions or personal beliefs. Rather it offers a learning experience firmly based on respect, diversity, tolerance, mutual trust and understanding. This programme offers a vision for a new beginning, one that rejects all forms of violence and advances. Peaceful dialogue is the only means of creating change.
Edmund Rice College were accompanied with our friends from Monkstown Community School, Newtownbreda and Dundonald High School, and Grainne College from Donegal. It was a challenging and exciting trip, the travelling to Belgium helped bond all the party. You got to meet different people from different areas with similar and opposing views. The more the group bonded the more we seen how much we had in common, the myths of History from both sides.
It was fun exciting and extremely enlightening. The activities were designed by a team of highly motivated guides and trainers. They were highly experienced, motivated and knew their stuff. They were the best of ” Craic “, and the boys and girls liked them from the start. The programme is meticulously thought out.
Those who take part in the journey which describes and explains the horror of war, the politics of time, the conditions the soldiers served in. The Messine Experience describes and explains the huge loss of life and tells the true stories of Nationalist, Unionist Protestant and Catholic, how they fought side by side and died side by side, how they supported each other against a common enemy. It became so clear how differences at home need to be banished, how the political shift of attitude by dialogue can open up their lives.
There were many highlights of the tour, how peaceful and beautiful the country was today. How much respect they had for the fallen. The graveyards, numerous graveyards filled with the youth of that age, the waste of life, but the greatest was clearly the pupils of the schools forming relationships in a life changing experience. They encountered an education not just of their minds but of hearts as well.
An EMU trip which made a difference.
