Carl Frampton takes up fight for struggling families in Belfast

Former world champion boxer Carl Frampton has hailed those behind a new education and empowerment centre for struggling families as the “real heroes” of his home city of Belfast.

Frampton was the guest of honour on Tuesday at the opening of the city centre facility operated by the charity Foodstock.

Foodstock is already well known within Belfast for its work providing food and support to children, parents and others in need of help.

The new centre will offer educational opportunities to both children and adults, with tutoring and employment guidance among the services on offer.

Two weight world champion Frampton said the city centre location would ensure people from both sides of the traditional community divide in Northern Ireland would feel comfortable accessing the centre.

Frampton was welcomed to the ribbon cutting event by Foodstock founder and anti-poverty activist Paul Doherty, who is also an SDLP councillor and currently Belfast’s deputy lord mayor, and Foodstock board member Ciaran Toman.

“It’s an honour and a privilege to be asked to come down here and do this,” said the boxing champion.

“So I just want to say, ‘well done, boys’.

“This (Belfast) is a place, and I think it’s throughout the world really, where sports people and musicians and people like that are seen as the heroes of the community.

“But I think people like Paul and Ciaran and everybody else involved are the real heroes.

“They’re helping people that need our help.”

Frampton added: “Obviously the cross-community aspect of it is massive too and to have a facility here in Belfast city centre.

“You know what this place is like – it can be very tribal, and people maybe don’t want to go here or there or whatever.

“But to have a central location willing to help anybody that needs their help, I just think it’s an amazing thing.”

Later the sports star turned pundit highlighted the need for more funding support for the centre.

“I would like to see a little bit more funding for them,” he said.

“These places are so, so important, and a lot of the funding, I think the vast, vast majority, is all through donations and people wanting to help out.

“There’s a great community spirit in Belfast.

“Well, it used to be, maybe it’s dwindled a little bit, not what it used to be, but if we can get that back, then Belfast would be a much better place.”

Mr Doherty outlined his vision for the newly fitted-out building on King Street.

“This new centre will be a place of opportunity, a place where learning, art, poetry and music meet practical skills, training and mentoring,” he said.

“A place where people will gain confidence, new qualifications and pathways into work, a place where people will come together over a meal and find connection, importantly, no matter who they are or where they’re from, across the city.

“And at the heart of it all is community.

“At the heart of it all is solidarity, because the centre, like everything it stands for, is built on both of those things.”

Mr Toman said he hoped the facility would be constantly busy across the six days a week it will operate.

“The hope and the dream is to keep this place filled six days a week, to empower people and children and to give them a feeling of worth, and to be able to create an opportunity that people really buy into and to improve people’s lives – that’s what we want to do,” he said.