Photography: Jamie Trimble
Creating opportunities in north Belfast
Suzanne Hamilton takes a look at how International Meeting Point’s Op Shop is building relationships in the communities it serves.
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nternational Meeting Point’s Op Shop in north Belfast is certainly well named. This Opportunity Shop is providing plentiful chances to reach out into the local community. Opened in 2019, the shop is a collaboration between North Belfast Presbytery and PCI’s Council for Mission in Ireland. Its aim is to reach out into the local community by providing quality nearly-new clothes and equipment for children up to early teens at affordable prices. By being sited at Carlisle Circus – one of Belfast’s interface areas – it naturally reaches into Northern Ireland’s two divided communities as well as with immigrant families who have settled in the city. Project leader Keith Preston describes the Op Shop as win-win. As well as a means for connecting with the wider community and building relationships, it allows members of Presbyterian
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congregations to get involved, either by donating or by helping in the shop. Zoë Bruce, wife of current PCI Moderator, is among those to volunteer. Shop manager Frances Jackson and the team of volunteers work hard at creating a welcoming space – it is more like a boutique than a charity shop; more like a community hub than a store.
It’s just growing in faith with these people and offering them the light into the darkness.
“It’s not just the selling of the clothes. It’s also the prayer ministry and the pastoral care that we really hone in on, which is great. And we know everybody,” explains Frances, adding, “They’re your friends, they’re not customers.” She tells stories of countless people who have come into the shop and unburdened themselves – drug addicts, alcoholics, gamblers, a grandmother mourning the loss of her baby granddaughter, a mother still traumatised by her son’s suicide years before, people living with a cancer diagnosis. All have found comfort in the Op Shop. “If I could put a plaque across the top of the shop doorway, it would be ‘I don’t know why I came into this wee shop’. So many people come in and say, ‘I don’t know why I came into this wee shop, I don’t have anybody to buy for,’ and I say to them, ‘Well isn’t it lovely that you’ve come in. You can have a browse and sure we can have a wee chat’…before you
