Naomi Masheti and Sr Jo McCarthy carry on the legacy of social justice at Nano Nagle Place

Sister Jo and Naomi Masheti worked together on a vision for the facility's work with the Cork Migrant Centre

Sr. Jo McCarthy and Dr. Naomi Masheti of Cork Migrant Centre, Nano Nagle Place, Cork.

Known as Sr Jo, Josephine McCarthy of the Cork Migrant Centre has more than 30 years in community development work having worked in Africa and South America among other places. She is a key shaper and developer of programmes at the Cork Migrant Centre.

“I never felt alone on this project — I always felt there were so many people wanting the success of this, that it would last and be of value,” she told Eoin English this year. “I’m very hopeful of the aliveness of the place, of the interest in it, and that has to be held but it needs buy-in from the whole of Cork city to keep it going.”

The centre provides free, confidential information on access to services and immigration issues and is managed by Naomi Masheti, a psychologist with PhD in the psychological wellbeing of African migrant children. “I had witnessed trauma among other migrants like me, but also great resilience,” she says of her experience of the migrants she met in the course of her work.

Recognising a need for services that dealt with the day-to-day stresses experienced by migrants like social isolation, language difficulties, lack of information and accessibility to resources, Masheti developed a vision for her work. “I yearned to work with migrant communities and go beyond their vulnerabilities to facilitate the strength and resilience that I had witnessed across the years being a migrant myself and living amongst other migrants.”

In 2018, she met Sr Jo and the stars aligned. Over the next four years, they developed a series of programmes that are committed to empowerment and support, working with the residents of Direct Provision centres across the county and delivering training, strength-based support and community to all who come through their doors.

“The first time, I walked through the gardens of Nano Nagle I felt a deep sense of home,” she says. Upon learning of the history of the place, and of Nano Nagle herself, Masheti says that there couldn’t be a more perfect venue for the Cork Migrant Centre. “Social justice is in the bones of the structure of Nano Nagle Place and Sr Jo and I are standing on the shoulders of Nano herself.”

The message of migrants is simple, says Masheti. “We want change and we want to be part it. We are not asking the system to change. We are asking the system to let us in.”