Expand ‘community planning’ and focus on wellbeing, urges McGinley

Community planning provides a model that builds on the tradition of the “very strong community spirit that prevailed in Northern Ireland” during the Troubles, argues Aideen McGinley in the latest Forward Trust podcast.  McGinley is a trustee of Carnegie UK, co-chair of its embedding wellbeing project in Northern Ireland and a former senior civil servant. Aideen stresses that we need to be positive rather than fearful as we look to the future.  “The bottom line is that people do not …

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This set of sensible recommendations subverts any notion that wellbeing might be cast as an abstract, woolly or unobtainable aspiration

20130417 Political Drama IMG_2009

When Health Minister Simon Hamilton and Finance Committee Chair Daithí McKay speak at Carnegie UK Trust’s important wellbeing gathering tomorrow, their appearance will provide further evidence that the holistic agenda continues to boast substantial support across party and department. It has not been proceeding in a vacuum. As the debate around welfare continues its stubborn impasse, wellbeing appears less stricken. Both Hamilton and McKay, co-patrons of Carnegie’s engagement with the political establishment in this regard, have demonstrated a keen interest …

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Are public libraries under-appreciated and under-used?

From the 1880s, Andrew Carnegie began to give money to build libraries – the most widely recognised feature of his philanthropy. From that date, he devoted himself to providing the capital for the building of public libraries and the development of library services. Between 1883 and 1929, 2,509 libraries were built, including 1,689 in the USA, 660 in the UK and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and others in Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean and South Africa. So it should come …

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