A lecture on the theme of women in peace, delivered by former president of Ireland and world renowned social campaigner, Mary Robinson, is to be beamed live from South Africa to her native Ballina on Tuesday.
Ms Robinson, who also served as a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002, will be speaking alongside fellow inspirational global leader, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, at the fourth annual international peace lecture in the Desmond and Leah Tutu Peace Centre in Capetown.
Archbishop Tutu is also to send his blessing, via video link, to the Mary Robinson Centre project, which is currently being developed in Ms Robinson’s childhood home at Victoria House on the banks of the Moy.
The broadcast will be shown at a free event at the Ballina Arts Centre at 6pm.
The broadcast is the first in a calendar of events planned to celebrate Ms Robinson and to put Ballina and the Mary Robinson Centre - which is expected to be open by early 2016 - on the map as a centre for academia and research in fields such as climate justice, women in leadership, and human rights.
The next event in the series will see Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunas from Bangladesh speak in Ballina for the inaugural International Human Rights Lecture of the Mary Robinson Centre on October 17.
Announcing both events, project manager for The Mary Robinson Centre, Susan Heffernan, said these events are to be “the first of many” for Ballina.
The Mary Robinson Centre is to be Ireland’s first presidential library and the €7.5 million project is a collaboration between Mayo County Council and the National University of Ireland Galway.
The centre will include a museum, presidential archive, research facility, and events venue.
For further information or to book a place at the upcoming events, email [email protected] or telephone Ms Heffernan on (086 ) 8093965.
