East Belfast Community Development Agency

East Belfast Survivors of Suicide (SOS) Group took part in the successful annual “Walk of Life” event to commemorate World Suicide Awareness Day. The walk signifies walking out of the darkness and into the light.  Approximately 40 people left Stormont gates at 4.30am.  A group of 10-12 had travelled from Londonderry to complete the walk and left their native City at 2.30am arriving at Stormont around 4.00am.  The group arrived at City Hall at 5.50am where they met with other group from North, South and West Belfast.

At City Hall, Lord Mayor Naomi Long addressed the crowd of around 250 people and talked about the important work that groups including SOS, PIPs, FASA and Suicide Awareness have been doing to tackle the issue of suicide across the City.  The Lord Mayor stated the importance of raising awareness of the issue and affirmed her personal support to families/individuals affected by suicide and expressed the need for ongoing and increased support in dealing with the problem.

Each of the organisations released Chinese Lanterns into the sky which represented each of the suicide support organisations from the North, West, South and East of the city and a host of balloons were also released to denote the number of people lost through suicide across Northern Ireland this year.

There was also poetry, music and key speakers from each of the aforementioned organisations. This was the first time that the event was organised by group’s right across the city.  This bodes extremely well for future best practice in taking a united approach across communities in dealing with the issue of suicide.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Lord Mayor Naomi Long for her support on the day.  We also wish to thank everyone involved in regard to the hard work involved in planning of the event and most importantly the family members themselves, without whom the event would not have been such a huge success.

We anticipate an even bigger and better event next year and the organisations involved in planning and organising this years event have already committed themselves to next year and we hope we can count on your continued support for Survivors of Suicide (SOS) and suicide awareness in East Belfast.