Personal Stories

David and Carl, Northern Ireland

David and Carl are pretty similar. They’re both from Belfast. They’re aged 17 and 16, respectively. And they both love football. Yet the fact that David is Protestant and Carl is Catholic meant that they were always unlikely to meet.

That was until they got involved in North Belfast Play Forum’s Midnight Street Soccer, a project that was funded by Comic Relief. Its aim is to bring communities in Belfast together, prevent crime in flashpoint areas and develop young people’s understanding of each other’s differences. One of the ways it does this is by getting young people to meet through Conflict Workshops, which is how David and Carl met.

David says, “The workshop was the first time I’d ever met a Catholic in my entire life. But as soon as I met Carl I became friends with him. I knew he was the same as me and we have the same interests. The only difference was that he was a Catholic and I was a Protestant.”

David and Carl now play with friends in a successful mixed Protestant and Catholic football team and have completed Irish Football Association coaching courses thanks to Midnight Street Soccer. They would also like to help others get involved with the project so they can benefit in the same way they have. David says, “I look at young people now who are beginning to get into bad stuff and I’d love to get them off the streets to do what I’ve been doing.”