Project Children, The Legacy

In 1975, as Northern Ireland was being torn apart by the Troubles, a small group of ordinary people had an extraordinary idea.

What if children from both sides of the divide could escape the violence for just a few weeks and experience something different?

From a kitchen table in Greenwood Lake, New York, Project Children was born.

What began with just six children grew into an extraordinary humanitarian programme that would eventually bring thousands of young people from Northern Ireland to the United States, placing Catholic and Protestant children with American host families and giving them something many had never known - a summer away from fear, division and conflict.

Project Children: The Legacy tells the story through the people who lived it.

Drawing on extensive interviews with founder Denis Mulcahy, his family, volunteers, host families, former Project Children participants, interns and supporters on both sides of the Atlantic, Jane Buckley brings together memories that are funny, moving, surprising and, at times, heartbreaking.

There are frightened children stepping onto aeroplanes for the first time. American families opening their homes to youngsters they had never met. Volunteers dealing with passports, paperwork and hundreds of children travelling across the Atlantic. There are friendships forged across religious and political divides, reunions decades later, and young people discovering that the world - and each other - were not quite what they had been taught to expect.

The story did not end with the summer programme.

Project Children evolved to create internship and scholarship opportunities for a new generation, strengthening relationships between Ireland and America and continuing a legacy built on reconciliation, friendship and the belief that ordinary people really can make a difference.

At its heart, however, this is not a book about politics.

It is about people.

About the parents who found the courage to send their children thousands of miles away to strangers. About the American families who welcomed them. About the volunteers who somehow made the impossible happen year after year. And about the children themselves, many of whom carried those six extraordinary weeks with them for the rest of their lives.

Filled with personal testimony and a remarkable collection of photographs spanning five decades, Project Children: The Legacy preserves the story of a programme whose impact reached far beyond those childhood summers.

It is a story of the Troubles, certainly.

But more than anything, it is a story of what can happen when people choose friendship over division, hope over fear and simply decide to do something good.

A powerful, warm and deeply human account of an extraordinary bond between Northern Ireland, Ireland and America - and the thousands of lives changed along the way.

Jane Buckley is an award-winning Northern Irish author, publisher and founder of Oakleaf Press. She is best known for the acclaimed Stones Corner series, historical fiction exploring life during the Troubles through the experiences of ordinary people. Her non-fiction book Project Children: The Legacy tells the remarkable true story of the programme that connected thousands of children from Northern Ireland with American families, creating friendships that have endured for generations. Jane is passionate about preserving overlooked stories, bringing history to life through the people who lived it, and championing independent authors through her work with Oakleaf Press.