1. On behalf of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland I am thrilled to be the recipient of the first ever Raymond Georis Prize for Innovate Philanthropy in Europe. And in the best tradition of the Oscars I want to thank Christopher Harris of the Ford Foundation for nominating the Community Foundation; to thank the eminent members of the Selection Panel of the Prize; and to thank Raymond Georis himself for inspiring such a trail-blazing award. At this point in our history, I feel that we desperately need both the challenge of a new vision of world order, and the linkage between the trans-national and the local. Europe has a history of philosophical and conceptual innovation; after all we are gathered in Athens.

2. For the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland our commitment to innovation has been forged through more than 30 years of communal violence; the still bitter legacies of that violence; and a deeply divided society - all encompassed in the tiny territory that is Northern Ireland, and within a population of one and a half million people. The Foundation held its belief in the essential wisdom and decency of ordinary people and disadvantaged communities even during the years of conflict. It was our privilege to work alongside ordinary people, whose names will rarely make the newspaper headlines, but who have shown outstanding courage, persistence and vision within their local communities. As a funder, it was our role to be accessible, flexible and a listening organisation for such activists. And perhaps this is the particular contribution that a locally based Community Foundation or indigenous funder can make - the critical role of having a finger on the pulse of developments and an ear to the ground. The limited resources we have can play a critical part in changing circumstances by being targeted and timely.

3. In our case, the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland has offered a small grants programme to avert and alleviate inter-communal violence during our regularly disturbed summer period. Our Board of Trustees allow small grants to be made within a twelve hour turn-around in crisis situations, such as when it might be wise to remove young people from a violent interface by sending them to summer camp, or bring elderly people away for a day after a night of pipe-bomb attacks. Unfortunately we no longer have funding for our Summer Crisis Fund - but the whole operation ran on €25,000 a year, and helped to resource communities to deal with conflict.

4. This is an example of innovative philanthropy to deal with the immediate and short-term. On a longer scale perspective the Community Foundation sought to influence the underlying political culture of a new Northern Ireland by establishing a Social Justice Fund. Again disbursing relatively modest grants (maximum €10,000) the work supported by the Social Justice Fund helped to raise local community awareness about the importance of a shared respect for civil liberties, human rights, social and economic rights and children's rights. It also funded over 100 community groups to make submissions to our new Human Rights Bill, in an effort to ensure that this will eventually be a People's Charter rather than the preserve of the legal profession. Again, this funding programme operated on a basis of €150,000; but it had the added value of a related seminar series which brought grant recipients together to exchange views about Social Justice, and to draw on the wisdom of speakers such as South African Human Rights Court Justice, Albie Sachs. A most amazing inspiration.

5. So if the innovative philanthropy is to mean anything it must be based on the ability to scan the political, social and economic landscape, as well as being open and sensitive to the potential pulse points of change at the level of local communities. And then it must actively work with those people most excluded and most affected to ensure that relevant philanthropic programmes are developed. In the immediate aftermath of the paramilitary ceasefires in Northern Ireland, the Community Foundation involved an additional 108 people, alongside its Board of Trustees, in delivering the generous European Union Support Programme for Peace & Reconciliation. One such Committee was composed of representatives of all the paramilitary ex-prisoner groups, from all sides of our sectarian divide, who met some 8 times a year to make recommendations on funding applications received relating to the re-integration of ex-prisoners into society. Two years earlier they had been killing each other. This was high level risk-taking for peace - and was often denounced as such - but if independent philanthropists are not prepared to venture their resources and credibility for such a worthwhile cause, then who should we look to? And in this regard I should say that the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland has a worthy role model, and that is the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

6. Innovation, to my mind, is not about what is novel or new, it is about more adventurous ways of doing things and having a keen eye to the niche opportunity for social change and progress. But innovation is also risk-taking. And it is about analyzing the outcomes of such ventures. It is not always about money - although clearly in the world of philanthropy the issue of resources is core - but is also about vision and people and flexibility. It is also about learning, and for this reason the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland is working with indigenous funders from South Africa, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Bosnia and the Abraham Fund that works in Israel, to develop a network of learning about funding policies and practices in both divided societies and societies emerging from conflict. Because I am acutely aware about how much we in Northern Ireland have drawn on the experiences of practical peacebuilding in South Africa, Central America and Eastern Europe. This, to my mind, is shared innovation.

7. Can I conclude by paying a tribute to Raymond Georis for his vision of a forward looking European philanthropy that draws on all that is best in the European philosophy of solidarity. What we need, as philanthropists, to be more effective is to develop a more diverse array of partnership approaches - between large Foundations and small, indigenous funders; between lofty concepts and the practical realities in local neighbourhoods and communities; and between those that have resources to distribute and those activists that devote themselves to making life better, different, or even bearable, for people in difficult circumstances. It is in such solidarity that we can affect change; that through our networks of praxis can then ripple out to challenge certainty.

8. On behalf of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland I would like to thank you and respect your vision.

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