23rd July 2025
During the first week of July, Beech Hall Day Centre in Andersonstown ‘invited the world’ to the centre with their Mela event – a week of events and activities to celebrate culture and diversity.
Beech Hall provides day support for adults with physical and sensory disabilities who live in West Belfast and who are between the ages of 18 and 65. It is one of a range of day support services provided by Belfast Trust.
The Trust’s day centre staff have worked hard to strengthen local partnerships with various organisations who represent many ethnic minority groups. Their goal is to foster a culture of inclusivity and celebrate diversity across all members of our society.
The Mela events and activities saw a range of multicultural themes celebrated each day, including Estonian and Bollywood dancing, Mexican Art, Chinese Lion and African Drumming workshops.
Eamonn McErlane, Service Manager for Physical & Sensory Disability Services, explained: “We had an idea to have a week-long Mela-type event at the day centre with different themes each day for the benefit of the service users.
“Many of our service users have physical, health and sensory disability needs and aren’t able to attend big events so we wanted to bring it to them.
“It went down fantastically well. Everyone really embraced all the different cultures.”
Stephanie Codd, Beech Hall Day Centre Manager, described the day centre as “a lifeline for our service users”.
“Many have been coming here for years,” Stephanie added. “We are lucky to have service users and staff from different cultural backgrounds so the week was all about celebrating that diversity and the richness it brings to Belfast Trust.”
