PeacePlus Awards €1 Million to Thirteen Cross-Community Projects Across Northern Ireland and Border Counties
The Special EU Programmes Body has announced that thirteen community and voluntary organisations across Northern Ireland and the border counties of the Republic will share one million euro in funding through the PeacePlus Change Maker grant initiative, with each project receiving up to €100,000 to support local cross-community work spanning youth sport, arts, and environmental restoration.
Background
PeacePlus is the successor to the long-running PEACE and INTERREG programmes that have channelled European Union funding into cross-community and cross-border initiatives on the island of Ireland since the mid-1990s. The programme, administered by the Special EU Programmes Body — a North-South implementation body established under the Good Friday Agreement — represents a post-Brexit commitment by both the UK and Irish governments, alongside the European Union, to sustain the peace dividend through targeted investment in communities that lived through the Troubles.
The Change Maker strand is specifically designed to support smaller, locally-led organisations that might not have the capacity to apply for larger capital grants. By capping individual awards at €100,000, the scheme deliberately targets the kind of grassroots groups that form the connective tissue of community life — youth clubs, arts collectives, environmental groups, and cross-community sports organisations that operate on tight budgets but deliver outsized social impact.
This latest round of awards brings the total disbursed through the Change Maker initiative to several million euro since PeacePlus launched its full programme in 2023. The funded projects span both sides of the border, reflecting the programme's core mandate to build relationships and shared understanding across the communities of Northern Ireland and the border counties of Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Louth, Monaghan, and Sligo.
Key Developments
The thirteen projects selected in this round represent a deliberately diverse cross-section of community activity. Youth sports programmes aimed at bringing together young people from different backgrounds feature prominently, as do arts initiatives designed to explore shared heritage and contested histories in a constructive way. Several of the funded projects focus on environmental restoration — a growing area of cross-community collaboration that sidesteps some of the more politically charged aspects of community relations work while building genuine shared purpose.
The Special EU Programmes Body confirmed that the selection process prioritised projects with demonstrable cross-community reach — meaning organisations that could show genuine engagement from both unionist and nationalist communities, or from communities on both sides of the border. Projects were also assessed on their sustainability plans, with the SEUPB keen to ensure that the funded work would outlast the grant period rather than creating dependency on external funding.
The announcement was welcomed by community sector representatives across Northern Ireland and the border counties, who noted that the funding arrives at a particularly challenging moment. The aftermath of serious anti-immigrant disorder in Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland in June has placed community relations under intense scrutiny, and the PeacePlus investment is seen as a concrete counter-narrative — evidence that cross-community work continues to flourish even when headline events suggest otherwise.
Why It Matters
The significance of this funding round extends well beyond the individual projects it supports. At a time when Northern Ireland's political institutions are under strain, when community tensions have been inflamed by disorder, and when the future of post-Brexit funding arrangements remains a subject of ongoing negotiation, the PeacePlus programme represents one of the few areas of genuine, functioning cross-community and cross-border cooperation.
It is worth noting that this is the third consecutive year in which the Change Maker strand has disbursed awards of this scale, suggesting a degree of institutional stability that is not always evident in other areas of North-South cooperation. Unlike the Foras na Gaeilge funding impasse or the stalled Casement Park project, PeacePlus has continued to deliver on its commitments with relatively little political controversy — a notable achievement given the fraught nature of cross-community work in the current climate.
The involvement of EU funding also carries symbolic weight. Northern Ireland's unique position — remaining aligned with EU single market rules for goods under the Windsor Framework while being part of the UK — means that European money continues to flow into communities here in a way that has no parallel elsewhere in the United Kingdom. For many community organisations, PeacePlus is a living reminder of the practical benefits of that arrangement.
Local Impact
The funded projects will be felt across a wide geographic spread. In border counties like Donegal and Monaghan, cross-border arts and environmental projects will bring together participants from communities that have historically had limited interaction. In Northern Ireland, youth sports programmes in areas including parts of Belfast, Derry, Newry, and Armagh will provide structured opportunities for young people from different backgrounds to build relationships through shared activity.
For the organisations involved, the funding is transformative at an operational level. A grant of €100,000 can sustain a small community organisation for a year or more, covering staff costs, venue hire, materials, and the administrative overhead that often prevents grassroots groups from scaling their work. Several of the funded organisations have indicated they will use the Change Maker award to pilot new programmes that they hope to sustain through other funding streams once the PeacePlus grant concludes.
Community workers in border areas have also noted the practical cross-border dimension — the ability to bring participants from the Republic and Northern Ireland together for shared activities is something that requires logistical coordination and funding that smaller organisations simply cannot manage without external support.
What's Next
The thirteen funded projects will begin their work in the coming weeks, with most programmes expected to run through to mid-2027. The Special EU Programmes Body will conduct interim reviews of each project's progress, with final evaluations feeding into the broader assessment of the PeacePlus programme's impact.
A further round of Change Maker funding is expected to be announced later in 2026, with the SEUPB indicating that demand for the scheme has consistently outstripped available resources. Advocacy groups in the community sector have called on both the UK and Irish governments to increase their contributions to PeacePlus in the next programme period, arguing that the return on investment — measured in community cohesion, reduced sectarianism, and cross-border economic activity — far exceeds the financial outlay.
The broader PeacePlus programme is scheduled to run until 2027, after which negotiations on a successor arrangement will need to begin. Given the political sensitivities around post-Brexit funding and the ongoing uncertainty about the long-term relationship between the UK and the EU, those negotiations are expected to be complex. For now, however, the Change Maker awards offer thirteen communities across the island a concrete reason for optimism.
