Flora Okobi of Culture Connect in Drogheda tells Catherine Reilly how her organisation aims to lessen misunderstandings between Ireland’s communities
Flora Okobi is originally from Nigeria and has lived in Ireland for 13 years. In 2010 she set up intercultural organisation Culture Connect in Drogheda, Co Louth, and this year received a civic award from Drogheda’s Mayor Paul Bell in appreciation of her work in promoting and developing relations between nationalities, traditions and cultures that are now part of the community in the town.
Prior to founding Culture Connect, Okobi trained in cultural mediation through Access Ireland. The training focused on communication, equality and an ability to mediate between service providers and service users from different cultural backgrounds.
“As the name implies, Culture Connect is an intercultural organisation that is geared towards promotion of integration, it is like a support agency that is dedicated to helping immigrants integrate into Irish society and also help the indigenous Irish community to better understand their new neighbours,” explains Okobi. “The goal is to expand a one-stop shop centre and to also provide services that are lacking in the community and to further help promote integration.”
Culture Connect is based at the Barbican Centre on William Street in Drogheda. “We provide information and training for individuals and service providers on issues relating to race, equality and cultural tolerance. We have an information centre and what we do is like what the Citizen Information Centre does.
“We provide information in different languages, information about employment, housing, social welfare, those issues that affect or impact on people’s lives. We provide the information in Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian and Russian... some migrants have difficulties in accessing information because of language difficulties.”
There is advice and support on issues relating to migrant cultures, behaviour, cultural conflict or ‘culture shocks’; advocacy services; interpreting services in Polish, Lithuanian, Russian and Latvian; mediation services relating to conflict resolution in the workplace, school or community; and conversational English classes.
“I had the idea and passion to do something for my community,” says Okobi. “Since I came in 2001 what I did was familiarise myself with the community and also familiarise myself in the area of culture and history and how I could be of help because I know as somebody coming from a different culture it is not easy to just blend with the new culture, so what I did was to go and volunteer in different organisations.”
Culture Connect is not core funded, but has obtained small grants for specific projects such as children’s activities (Louth Leader Partnership) and the development of a strategic plan (EU Peace III). Culture Connect is volunteer-driven and Okobi knew it would be a struggle to develop the service in the current climate. But she believes in what she does – and underlines the importance of breaking down barriers in a community that has diversified quite quickly.
“It can be a challenge to anybody because you would think ‘Oh, this culture cannot take over our culture, I am going to lose identity if I mix up with this culture.’ Even to us migrants as well, it could be a great challenge. This reaction is natural.
“Any change can be challenging to people as well. If in a community, you are used to a particular way of life, and there are people coming in bringing different ways of life and different cultures, it could be a big problem to any community.”
Culture Connect, she says, aims to promote integration and lessen any fears and misunderstandings within the community.
