IrishCentral last week announced that WorldIrish, Ireland’s online social community website, is joining the online news home of the global Irish in the US and worldwide. The partnership further strengthens the IrishCentral conglomerate, which serves 1.6 million unique visitors each month.
Speaking in response to the move Ireland Reaching Out (Ireland XO) Chairperson and founder, Mike Feerick, welcomed the development. He said “Ireland XO believes that this amalgamation will help strengthen and unify the global Irish diaspora. Duplication of effort by a large number of small Irish Diaspora initiatives has long proven a drain on international Irish diaspora resources.
“A movement toward restructuring the sector will bring greater scale and capability. Online organisations such as IrishCentral and WorldIrish, whether for profit or not-for-profit are a vital component in developing a vibrant Irish Diaspora”.
Feerick stated that Ireland XO currently works closely with IrishCentral for the benefit of the Irish Diaspora but that further more formalised allegiances may be examined in the future and that Ireland XO, as the leading Irish-based diaspora organisation will continue to focus its development work in the community and voluntary sector on the ground across Irish parishes, north and south.
Speaking about the WorldIrish initiative, Feerick stated that “John McColgan deserves enormous credit for showing real leadership and commitment to Ireland in developing the WorldIrish concepts over the past four years. These concepts will have the opportunity to take full-flight within the IrishCentral platform and in partnership with organisations like Ireland XO in the future”.
WorldIrish will be joining an array of other news providers under the IrishCentral brand including Irish America magazine, Irish Voice newspaper, and Home and Away newspaper.
Ireland Reaching Out (Ireland XO) is a multi-award-winning programme based on a simple idea; instead of waiting for Irish descendants and their global counterparts to come back to Ireland to trace their roots, they go the other way. Working through voluntary effort at a townland and parish level, local Irish communities identify who left, tracing them and their descendants worldwide inviting them to become part of an extended “virtual” community with their place of origin. In this way, the entire Irish Diaspora of 70 million can be systematically reunified.
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