Nano Nagle Place and
Cork Migrant Centre
Nano Nagle Place, Evergreen Street, T12 XPX8
Nano Nagle Place is a city-centre home to many things including a museum, gardens, community hub, café and shops. It is named after Nano Nagle (1718-84), a brave and visionary Cork woman who gave up a comfortable life to help poor children in the city.
Born Honora Nagle in 1718, ‘Nano’ was her nickname. She opened schools for poor children and helped them and their families to improve their lives. She founded a new Catholic order, the Presentation Sisters, in 1775 to help her with her work. After Nano’s death in 1784, the order grew. Today Presentation Sisters work across five continents.
Nuns from the order continue to live and work at Nano Nagle Place. They try to stay true to Nano’s ideas about justice, caring and the importance of education. The community projects at Nano Nagle Place, including The Lantern, Cork Migrant Centre and the Men’s Group, are all inspired by Nano’s ideas.
You can visit the museum at Nano Nagle Place. It tells the story of Nano, her life and the growth of the Presentation Sisters order, The museum has recently won an important European prize, the Council of Europe Museum Prize.
As a radical, powerful woman Nano Nagle can be an inspiration to us all.
The Cork Migrant Centre (CMC), is a Psychosocial Wellbeing and Integration Hub based at Nano Nagle Place in Cork City. The inspirational Naomi Masheti is Programme Director. It was established by the Presentation Sisters in 2006. The Presentation Sisters were founded by Nano Nagle in the late 18th Century. Nano’s mission was one of education and social justice for the most disadvantaged young people in Cork. The Presentation Sisters have carried that legacy forward both in Ireland and across the world. Today, the work at Nano Nagle Place aims to tell Nano’s incredible and inspirational life story and to bring that alive in the 21st Century. This is done through its Community Hub.
The Centre is committed to advocating on behalf of migrant children, families, and communities, and to ensure they have access to the services and supports they need to alleviate the day-to-day challenges and provide them the best possible opportunities to empower them individually and collectively.
CMC Programs and activities are conceptualized within a psychosocial framework which pays attention to migrant’s individual, family and collective risk and resilience processes in relation to ways in which migration (pre-migration, migrating, post-migration), social, cultural, structural (migration policies and practices) and institutional (health, education, political, economic, and religious) processes shape their lives. The Centre aims to promote healthy psychosocial functioning by addressing risks and nurturing strengths and/or resilience in these levels. The programs are delivered mainly by migrants themselves in a culturally sensitive way.
The programs target all children, youth, adults, and families from direct provision centres in Cork as well as migrants settled in the local Cork community (refugees/asylum seekers and economic migrants) to strengthen their wellbeing capacities and aid their integration into the Irish Community. The psychosocial programs target empowerment by giving these vulnerable individuals a voice and strengthening their physical, emotional, cognitive, and social health. It also aids in their integration process. CMC engages with this population at their most vulnerable (when they have little or no English at all, when they are so insecure, uncertain, voiceless, stressed) when their psychosocial vulnerabilities act as a big challenge to engaging with available resources.
Author: Naomi Masheti
Website: www.corkmigrantcentre.ie