Project Children is an American-Northern Ireland partnership dedicated to showing Protestant and Catholic kids that they have nothing to fear from each other and much to gain. The program started in 1975 with six children from Belfast, three from one community and three from the other. The kids spent that summer in America, getting to know each other in a small New York town. Now Project Children places hundreds of children from Northern Ireland with host families across America each summer. And several years ago, we expanded to include university students by offering summer internships on Capitol Hill. A few months later, a new venture with Habitat for Humanity and local trade unions pulled in vocational students and gave them on-the-job experience building homes in America. Project Children also sponsors programs in Northern Ireland that bring together Protestant and Catholic children and their families. Although we have expanded, our vision remains the same: to help build peace in Northern Ireland through its children and young people.

As of the summer of 2004, over 19,000 youngsters from Belfast, Armagh, Strabane, Enniskillen, and Derry could be counted as "alumni." Project Children works closely with teachers, clergy, and social workers in Northern Ireland to identify youngsters who would benefit most from a summer in America. The children range in age from 11 to 16 and come from neighborhoods in which the Protestant-Catholic conflict has taken an especially heavy toll. In the States, over 4,000 American families have opened their homes to Project Children's Irish visitors, and it is they who constitute the heart of the program. Project Children seeks to touch individual lives and to give participating youngsters the summer of a lifetime.

Because it so clearly accomplishes that goal, its army of supporters on both sides of the Atlantic continues to grow. The broader goals of the organization are harder to chart and only time will reveal their success. Everyone associated with Project Children hopes that in providing a taste for life as it can be--without the sectarian hatred and violence--they are playing a small part in laying the foundation for peace in Northern Ireland. Project Children does not claim to have the answer to the Irish "troubles," but it does provide a way for concerned Americans to make a difference--one child at a time.

Click here to read what the children, interns, host families, and politicians have to say about Project Children in their own words.