The business world cup in South Africa

Curt deBerg is an inspirational youth leader from California who came to St Malachy's College in Belfast recently to host the first-ever all-Ireland SAGE entrepreneurship competition for young people.
The lucky winners of that Dublin-Belfast clash, St Malachy's  ("they enjoyed home court advantage," Curt told me, winning out over St Michael's Holy Faith Secondary School from Finglas), will now head out to South Africa for the SAGE World Cup in late July where they will compete against teams from 17 other countries with bright ideas for new businesses. Their costs are being met by an ex-pupil now working with the Credit Suisse bank who has been supportive of the school.

SAGE brings students together with mentors to encourage them to take on a business venture. At the end of the academic year, the student teams showcase their efforts on a regional, national and world stage. 

The 'referees' in these competitions come from the world of business — in the Belfast competition, some of our best-known business people were involved.

When I met Curt in Belfast recently — I caught him at the Europa just before he headed back to the US for the American national finals in Buffalo, New York — he was exploring ways of bringing the SAGE World Cup to Belfast next year. Last year, the World Cup was in Brazil where the locals presented in Portugese, though most entries are in presented in English. SAGE is also active in China, Nigeria, Russia and the Ukraine.

You can read more about SAGE, set up by this one-man hurricane from California, at their website.

Busted flush

So how will you know when you enter the Gaeltacht Quarter in West Belfast? By the signage of course.

That's why I find it appalling to see these hoardings for a bookmaker go up opposite An Chultúrlann, the very heart of the Gaeltacht Quarter.

Ladbroke's previously told the Gaeltacht Quarter board it wouldn't put up any bilingual signage because it had to have the same branding on all its shops. Does anyone believe this type of full-frontal signage would be allowed in the Titanic Quarter? In fact, I doubt if even Las Vegas, the capital of gambling, would allow this crass advertising.


I'm told the planning authorities have been alerted to enquire about the legality of this signage.

Getting the basics right

Language, of course is a wondrous thing. I heard on the BBC news today that armed Israeli commandos has "peacefuly boarded" the Rachel Corrie.

I was thinking of the brave human rights champions on that boat as I ran along the coastal path out from Holywood, past Cultra and towards Bangor this morning. Ships plied their way along Belfast Lough to Belfast Harbour, a magical part of any great city port. And yet in Gaza, we have ports which haven't received a trading vessel in 40 years. One suspects that this issue will be the red-hot human rights button of the entire world, with peaceloving people everywhere finding themselves on one side and Israel on the other.

Of course, in Ireland it was the ordinary citizen who pushed the governments to action — witness the Dunnes Stores workers strike against South African produce — and we are seeing that again with Irish peace workers spearheading the efforts of Amnesty International and the United Nations to have the abomination of the torture of Gaza ended. All of us who believe the only solution to the plight of the Palestinian people is through peaceful means can only feel great pride in our Irish emissaries.

Meanwhile, back to that coastal pathway, where I met the Chairman of Northern Ireland Tourist Board, the redoubtable Howard Hastings out taking his constitutional, it's impassable in parts, a disgrace in others; in short it's not a tourist product. My heart went out to a pair of hardy tourists who took their bikes onto the pathway, pressing further along towards Bangor in the hope that the rock and gravel beneath their feet would give way to a, well, to a coastal pathway. Not a chance, the further you go, the worse it gets.

On Thursday night past the great and the good gathered for the annual tourism awards in City Hall, Belfast — and An Chultúrlann picked up one of the big awards of the night. The last time I attended that bash, it was at the Folk Museum in Cultra, a 100 metres from the perilous pathway. Perhaps the bigwigs would be better served taking time out to explore what should be one of our greatest tourism trails rather than gorging themselves on free dinners.

By the way, this web pic shows one of the passable parts of the pathway though there's a barrier erected by workmen who have been toddling along on the reconstruction of the pathway for several months now, preventing you accessing even this part. Yes, I did dodge past the fence barrier.

Transforming our future, one student at a time

We had a great turnout this morning for the launch of the annual Aisling Bursary Educational programme — initiated by the Belfast Media Group and the hardworking West Belfast Partnership Board — which has provided over a third of a million pounds to West Belfast students in the ten years of its existence (this is year 11).

Geraldine McAteer, CEO of the Partnership Board, had some frightening statistics about the number of children from the Shankill who make it to third-level education. Last year, just over 2300 young people from West Belfast went on to college. Of that number, 20, less than one per cent were from the Shankill.

Terence Brannigan, Chair of CBI Northern Ireland, who also spoke at today's launch in the Cultúrlann, said he planned to raise five £1,000 scholarships for the Shankill this year to see if we couldn't improve that figure by 25 per cent. That would be quite a rise! The bursaries will be offered to the parents of primary school children in the Shankill to encourage them to tackle third level education — and no doubt that will raise the expectations of the next generation as well.

As Terence said, education is the greatest way to break out of poverty — poverty in hard financial terms but also from intellectual poverty.

Gerry Adams said the bursaries helped to raise expectations. He has spent a lot of time over the past few years working with schools in the Shankill where deprivation indices — such as the need for speech therapists — are an indictment of us all.

The good news is that Michael McAdam, the entrepreneur behind the Moviehouse pehnomenon has put in the first £2,000 to this year's kitty to fund a scholarship for West Belfast and the first of the five for the Shankill. Good for him.

Pictured at the launch are solicitor Michael Flanigan, John Jones of the Kennedy Centre, Cllr Caoimhín Mac Giolla Mhín and Rory Galway of Bombardier. Also pictured are Clodagh Grimes of Westwood Centre, Dan McGinn of the University of Ulster, Ciarán Mackel of ARD-Ciaran Mackel Architects and Hugh Kennedy, founder of Curley's and Kennedy Centre supremo.

Fundraiser for British-Irish Rights Watch

AN OPPORTUNITY TO OWN A RARE COPY OF
ROBERT BALLAGH’S PORTRAIT OF PATRICK FINUCANE

Thanks to the generosity of world famous Irish artist Robert Ballagh, and with the kind consent of the owners, the Belfast Media Group and Paul Cooper, and the blessing of the Finucane family, British Irish rights watch has available one print of Robert Ballagh’s powerful portrait of Patrick Finucane, the Belfast lawyer murdered in 1989.

One of only a handful of prints in existence, it is offered on condition that it will not be reproduced without the express permission of the artist and the owners.

If you would like to be the proud owner of this wonderful framed print, send us your offer of a charitable donation to British Irish Rights Watch by midnight on 30th June 2010.  We will publish the highest offer received to date anonymously on our website regularly between now and then, so that you can see the state of play.  Because art should never be undervalued, we cannot accept offers of less than £750, €750, or $950, but we hope to raise much more than that, as this is a print that can only accumulate in value, given its rarity, and the fame of both the artist and his subject.  The print will be shipped, free of charge, courtesy of and with best wishes from the Finucane family, to whoever has made the highest offer by the deadline.  Offers can be made in sterling, euros or dollars.

To make your offer, please e-mail birw@birw.org by midnight British summer time on 30th June 2010 and put “Pat Finucane print” in the subject line.  Offers will be deemed to include consent to the condition that the print is not to be reproduced without the express permission of the artist and the owners.

Robert Ballagh is an Irish artist and designer whose works are to be found in the National Gallery of Ireland, the Hugh Lane Gallery, the Ulster Museum, Trinity College Dublin and elsewhere.  In 1969 he represented Ireland at the Paris Biennale and his paintings have been exhibited from Florence to Tokyo.  His theatre and set designs include Riverdance and the Special Olympics in Dublin in 2003.  His portrait of Patrick Finucane was commissioned by the Belfast Media Group and Paul Cooper to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his murder.

Patrick Finucane was a gifted lawyer who was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in Belfast in 1989.  Since his death credible evidence has emerged which implicates the army, the police and the intelligence service in his murder.  International opinion, led by the United Nations and former Canadian Supreme Court judge Peter Cory, has concluded that a public inquiry is required into his death, but 21 years on his family are still campaigning to be told the truth about the circumstances surrounding his brutal murder.

British Irish RIGHTS WATCH (BIRW) is an independent non-governmental organisation and registered charity that has been monitoring the human rights dimension of the conflict, and the peace process, in Northern Ireland since 1990.  Our vision is of a Northern Ireland in which respect for human rights is integral to all its institutions and experienced by all who live there.  Our mission is to secure respect for human rights in Northern Ireland and to disseminate the human rights lessons learned from the Northern Ireland conflict in order to promote peace, reconciliation and the prevention of conflict.  BIRW’s services are available, free of charge, to anyone whose human rights have been violated because of the conflict, regardless of religious, political or community affiliations.  BIRW take no position on the eventual constitutional outcome of the conflict.

Arts and business

At the tourism awards in City Hall tonight, I'm told the Cultúrlann may pick up a prize for its contribution to tourism.

Maith iad.

I will miss the celebrations as I spent most of the evening at Stormont where Ministers McCausland and Foster were discussing how to increase business contribution to the arts.

Arlene Foster had to leave us early to attend the tourism awards, and in fact headed to the door as Minister Nelson McCausland rose to speak. "I've had walkouts before," he deadpanned.

Stone age language attitudes

If you scroll down to the judges' decision upholding a racist 1727 ban on the use of Irish in courts in the North, you will see just how we remain in the stone age when it comes to the treatment of our native language.

One doubts if there's another European country which would stand over this type of outmoded view.

In fact, here's the quotes for you:

Lord Justice Girvan said: "Conferring on individual litigants a right at their option to convert court forms from English into a language not understood by the vast majority of intended recipients would frustrate the interests of justices."
He added: "In a jurisdiction where English is the language of the overwhelming majority of the population the requirement that court documents initiating proceedings be in English as the working language of the court is a practical necessity in the interests of fairness."

From subway to ecommerce

Bill McKiernan, founder and Chairman of Cybersource, sold recently for $2bn to Visa, gives a remarkable speech here about his Irish ancestors, in particular his great grandfather who left Leitrim for New York — where he built the subway tunnels — in 1904.

Ecommerce pioneer Bill was the Irish Technology Leadership Group 2010 honoree back in March in San José, California.

Growing up in a housing project in lower Manhattan, he was close to the McKiernan clann in New York and found it incredibly gratifying to be able to invest in Belfast though he stresses that investment is a business decision.