Friendships Without borders is a joint U.S. / Irish peace project that seeks to encourage young and older people from interdenominational and inter-ethnic backgrounds to visualize a future New Ireland in terms of personal relationships, inter-community reconciliation, culture and economy through various forms of media expression such as community journalism, film making, cinema and theatre. The project represents a commitment to cross-community and intergenerational sharing. It seeks to develop positive conflict resolution skills and to create a programme of reinvestment in the social fabric which will foster sharing, caring, and the creation of new opportunity for young and old people alike accross all community lines of division thus helping to render old animosities irrelevent.

The curriculum of Friendships Without Borders includes the examination of:
1. The role of individuals and family within the community
2. Self identity and development
3. Diversity and cultural understanding
4. Personal Objectives
5. Moral values
6. Prevalent community values
7. Cross cultural conflit and conflict resolution
8. Violence prevention and intervention
9. Theories of conflict and its resolution
10. Building a team approach

The Community Development Youth Corp, the active unit for this project, a free-standing non-profit organization, will seek to provide a model of youth commitment to the development of community as well as self-development in the 21st Century. Based initially in Ireland, north and south - later extended to Britain and other areas of social conflict e.g., in the Balkans, South Africa and the Americas - CDYC members, in a time of fragility and rapid change in society, will dedicate themselves to the strengthening of community-wide structures, to identifying community needs and to harnessing the capacity of youth to meet those needs with an ongoing agenda. The CDYC project is based on a strong belief that youth can bring enormous idealism and enthusiasm to the task of building community if offered the challenge and supported through appropriate structures.

CDYC participants will commit themselves to community development projects which also strengthen their own development while continuing their education - meeting standard educational requirements. They will be provided with training for that community service, and with the assistance of CDYC staff they will provide leadership for youth projects in the communities in which they serve. They will gain support and guidance from a Senior Corps, CDYC staff and peers, drawn from seniors in the communities in which they serve. In return they will receive tuition assistance for the training program, and college level students will also receive academic credits for the educational program and significant grants toward college tuition, vocational education or living expenses.

The Senior Corps: A further resource, the older population, will be included on a voluntary basis, to enlist their skills, experience and abilities. The project will seek the commitment of older community residents through a Senior Corps, which will harness the expertise and experience of older adults and re-inforce traditional moral and family values through a mentoring program designed to assist CDYC youths to achieve success in their projects, and to bring to bear assets in the communities in which they serve. It is expected that several Senior Corps mentors can be recruited in each community in which CDYC members carry out community development activities, providing at least two mentors for each group of five CDYC students.

The CDYC project will be a free-standing non-profit organization, dedicated to the purposes stated above. It will have a Board of Directors, composed of educators, human service leaders, business and financial, religious and cultural leaders. The board will have responsibility for overall policy direction for the project. They will also assist in development of the resources, financial and otherwise, necessary to the success of the project. The CDYC project will have professional staff with a solid base of knowledge of community development, youth education and psychological development. The staff will be supplemented with expertise provided by academic and other consultants. Senior community residents will provide an important mentoring resource to CDYC members and will participate in all training programs.

CDYC participants will be drawn from the teenage population in secondary schools for the initial two years of the project, and college students will be invited to participate from the third year forward. The primary age group involved in CDYC will be from 15 to 18 years of age, since those are the years in which fundamental career choice and commitment to community service can be nurtured most positively. Participation will be open equally to male and female youth, and students will be drawn from private and public schools, religiously affiliated and other community schools, without exclusion. Participation from the inception of the project will be open to youth from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The CDYC project will be open to youth from any part of Britain as well as Ireland after the initial four years. Participation in EU sponsored intra-European learning and service experiences will also be incorporated, as feasible, in the Friendships Without Borders project.

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