– Community workers seek to lift spirits amidst chaos
– Inchicore project’s block targeted in one shooting
– Family Resource Centre Coordinator appeals for solidarity with the community in Inchicore and for more support.

DRUG and gang-related crime is having a severe impact on Inchicore and recently included an afternoon shooting at a block of flats housing one of the country’s most resilient community projects.

Coordinator Rita Fagan of St Michael’s Estate Family Resource Centre has shared her project’s regular newsletter that highlights all they do to nurture peace, safety and empowerment. She also appealed for solidarity with the community in Inchicore and for more support.

The community has experienced violence in recent times and the project offices came under fire in the midst one recent incident.

The project receives funding and support through the Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme, Tusla, Dublin City Council, the Community Foundation of Ireland, and Dublin South City Partnership, among others. 

In St Michael’s latest newsletter, Ms Fagan writes: 

“Dear Deputies, Counsellors, Officials, Friends and Supporters of the Family Resource Centre St Michael’s Estate Community Development Project,

 “There has been a lot of talk and response to the crisis relating to anti-social behaviour and its consequences in Cherry Orchard. However, running parallel to this, anti-social behaviour has embedded itself in many hotspots throughout Dublin. 

“We have witnessed really awful, chronic, anti-social behaviour here in the small communities of Inchicore as a result of drugs and gang culture; an attempted shooting into the block in Tyrone Place where we are located at 16:00 in the afternoon, followed by a siege of this block also and an innocent victim chased from the canal and cornered in Thornton Heights and set on fire,” she wrote.

She rightly encourages all to read the newsletter to see what staff and volunteers in St Michael’s Family Resource Centre Community Development Project are doing “to reclaim the community and lift the people’s spirits”.

If you want to know why community development – often invisible – is so important, visit St Michael’s, or read their newsletter, which is full of activities undertaken in a beleaguered yet proud community.

To subscribe to the newsletter, or to contact St Michael’s, email: rita.fagan@frcsme.ie