AS WE BEGIN the week-long Polska Eire festival today, I can’t help but reflect on the journey that has brought me here.

When seven-year-old me arrived in Ireland 11 years ago, I never thought that I would be involved in organising a nationwide festival to celebrate Polish-Irish cultural diversity. Yet here I am, one of the organisers of the festival’s key events. Polska Eire 2015, which will run from the 21–29 March is an imitative of Minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, the Polish Charge d’Affair, Piotr Rakowski and the FAI and its aim is to celebrate the 150,000 Polish people who now call Ireland home.

I came to Ireland on 24 August 2004, following my mom who had emigrated two months earlier. I had absolutely no English other than ‘my name is’ and ‘I don’t understand’. I still remember the great efforts of my first primary school teacher to try and teach me English. She used to spend entire afternoons with me reading stories word by word, acting them out with theatrical gestures and facial expressions, trying her absolute best to make me understand. And you know what, as silly as it must have looked to the rest of the class, it worked.

The issue of poor integration is not addressed enough

In secondary school, I began to understand integration a bit more. Nowadays, I can often see how people of the same nationality or race almost naturally become friends and spend time together. While some mix well with everybody else too, others stay in those small groups, and that’s not good integration. I think the issue of poor integration is not addressed enough. We might talk about racism or even xenophobia, but what about simply looking at whether young people are mixing well with each other, and if not, what are the barriers?

In my opinion, integration is about how well we all work together and about making our society inclusive. It is about treating everyone equally but not about seeing everyone as the same. On the contrary, it’s about respecting each individual’s background and heritage, and not judging them based on that. It’s about getting to know everyone in the same way, giving them equal opportunities and including them in different activities, regardless of their nationality, gender, religion, race, etc.

Celebrating diversity while also finding our commonalities 

When it comes to immigrants and second generation immigrants, it is also about giving people the freedom to explore and express their identity. It’s important that people are able to maintain their culture and traditions in the new environment, if they chose to do so, and they shouldn’t be treated differently because of this.

We need to look around and see the contribution that immigrants and second generation immigrants are making to Irish society and to realise that in order to make the most of our potential as a society, we need good integration. By mixing with each other and making everybody feel like they belong, we can build a much stronger and happier society. In order to achieve this, we need to improve education about other cultures and promote integration of new communities in schools and local communities.

Let’s make the most out of our diverse society!

Thanks to the Polska-Eire festival, this process can start happening. There are two integration themed conferences happening, one for young people and another looking at sport as a medium for integration. I’m involved in organising the one for young people and I’m very excited to hear what the delegates will have to say about their experiences of integration.

These events will be a good starting point for the conversation about integration and what needs to be done to improve it. Next, a strategy for supporting integration locally and nationally needs to be drawn up to make sure that Ireland can make the most out of its diverse, multicultural society. I know that this is something that the Minister is quite anxious about as he is responsible for the development of the National Integration Strategy.

I now know that I belong here

Polska-Eire highlights the contribution of non-Irish populations to Irish society and I hope that it will prompt everyone to start thinking about integration and inclusion in society and what can be done to make it better.

For me, good integration means that today, after ten years in Ireland, I feel very much at home here and I know that I belong. It’s important that we improve integration, in particular for young people, in order to help them be the best they can be and to make them feel safe and happy in Ireland; their new home. I can’t wait to see the outcomes of the festival and I hope that we will all continue talking about and improving integration long after it.

Joanna Siewierska is the Education Officer of the Irish Secondary Students Union. Originally from Poland she moved to Ireland in 2004 at the age of seven. She is currently studying for her Leaving Certificate and lives on the northside of Dublin. Polska Eire runs nationwide from the 21st – 29th of March and the full list of events can be found at www.polskaeirefestival.com