A MULTI-cultural day of food, music and dance was recently held at the Catholic Chaplaincy at Queens University Belfast.
This event was originally planned to be held as part of 'Good Relations Week' programme but took place last Saturday (October 9) after having been deferred due to Covid.
The project brought together five different communities in the Belfast area, focusing on ethnic minorities.
These communities included residents from Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and the local/host community.
Plans were made for each community to be represented on one night during the week, where people can come together and learn about the different cultures through a keynote speaker and sample foods and music from that particular culture.
The events were open and accessible to all within the community, helping to strengthen relations between both ethnic minorities and local residents in the North.
Suleiman Abdulahi, Director and Founder from Horn of Africa People's Aid Northern Ireland (HAPANI) organisation, who helped organise the event said: "Through this programme, we aim to build the capacity of each community and their representative groups, as they have little to no equipment or experience in running such events and supporting the community on a larger scale.
"HAPANI assisted this project with the aim of supporting and assisting the groups to run similar events independently in the future.
"It is essential that we continue to strengthen relations within our community between ethnic minorities and residents from Northern Ireland, as these are some of the most marginalised and deprived people nationwide."
