Andrew de Butler

So Andrew de Butler, Sanam Dum.

This was originally a BOTP centre for Ukrainian refugees and then they changed it so that it was kind of half an IPAS centre and half for Ukrainian refugees.

There's a really strong community of people here that welcomed me in and I kind of thought that, you know, the gang of us that were working and living here, we thought, well sure, we might as well extend the same welcoming hand to the people who were coming in.

So the people that moved in here, we were told they'd be military-aged men, and sure, you know, Frank and the Saturdays that are here, and then we had two families coming from Jordan via Palestine as well, and just lovely, salt-of-the-earth people.

So we just started doing a bit of community work with them, playing five-a-side once a week and organising a community ceilidh once a month.

They'd do a bit of dabke and then we'd do a bit of our set dancing.

And yeah, eventually got to a point where Ristard, who I live with, he'd be big into gardening and doing raised beds and stuff.

And we just thought, sure, we'll throw this together.

And it was a really good response from the community, from people we know living in Galway and other people we'd be organising with around house and stuff as well.

Yeah, we had a serious growth here.

We're after taking all the plants out now this morning.

But yeah, it's been great.

It's bringing people together, like Martin and Mike there, and people from the Men's Shed, people from Ancaparua, and our new neighbours and members of the community here.

And I think food is just a really good way to bring people together as well.

We're learning about their culture and they're learning about ours.

He grows at home and they have cows and chickens and geese.

It sounded very much like Ireland 78 years ago.