Imagine trying to paint a picture with just one colour? Or if the radio only played one song. What if you had to eat the same meal every day? The world benefits from diversity, from more than one outlook on life and one point of view.

After a successful run in Dublin in 2006, Concern in conjunction with Suas Development Education brought Building Unity Through Diversity to Cork in 2007.

Reaching out and engaging Irish people in development have always been an important part of the work that Concern and Suas do. We believe that we can never truly tackle the problems of the developing world until we understand the factors that drive inequality.

Building Unity Through Diversity is an EU funded project, run by Echo Communications, which aims to explore the issues surrounding cultural diversity and how this links into our understanding of development in Africa.

Africa is a continent that is rich in culture. From Angola to Zimbabwe, there are many diverse cultures and peoples. No country, region or village are the same.

However, they all share similar hopes for a better life.  A life that is free from poverty, where they can give their children the gift of an education and where no child goes to bed hungry. As development organisations we want to explore how this diversity impacts on our work and how can we harvest the cultural capital of Africa to provide a better future for its entire people.

As part of the project, the world renowned exhibition – 1,000 Families – A Family Album of Planet Earth was displayed in Fitzgerald Park from July 14th – 12th August 2007. During his travels to over 130 countries, photographer Uwe Ommer captured images of over 1,000 Families in their domestic setting. The resulting work is a powerful illustration of our world’s diversity, that highlights the common values of love and respect that all families share. The images on show in Fitzgerald Park provide an elegant backdrop for the further exploration of the objectives of the Building Unity Through Diversity project, which is to stimulate a dialogue around cultural diversity and development.

Understanding and embracing cultural diversity is a challenge for us as individuals and as a society.  As part of our commitment to developing a greater understanding of the developing world, Concern and Suas are also running a number of seminars to explore the issues surrounding cultural diversity and development in more depth.