Belfast city council launches gardening scheme to tackle key issues

Belfast City Council will be launching a new scheme which involves activities such as gardening in order to tackle key issues such as racism, inequality and sectarianism. The scheme, which will be known as the "Growing Respect" programme, will involve 20 neighbourhoods and over 200 people of all ages from different areas of the city.
The scheme will last for 17 weeks and will include gardening, cultural awareness workshops and sports, with help from community volunteers.
Chris Lyttle, of the Alliance Party, described the scheme as "exciting".
"This exciting scheme is quite literally grassroots good relations work," he said.
"I hope this project takes seed and grows across Northern Ireland. It is crucial we tackle sectarianism to help transform society and enable the removal of division.
"Segregation costs around £1 billion annually. This massive waste of money is hurting our vital public services, our economy and damaging out society and projects like this are important in helping us address this issue."