Wilmington, Delaware · Since 1976
Fourteen teenagers land here in summer 2027. We need fourteen families to take them in.
Fourteen teens from Portadown, Northern Ireland — drawn in equal number from both of its divided communities — each paired with a Delaware teen the same age and welcomed into that family's home for four weeks. Fourteen households across Delaware, one matched pair in each. That's the whole program, and it doesn't run without host families.
2027 — Host family applications open right now
Why this matters
Peace gets signed by governments. Trust gets learned one friendship at a time.
The fighting in Northern Ireland ended in 1998. The separation didn’t. Most children there still attend schools and grow up on streets that are almost entirely Catholic or almost entirely Protestant — a teenager can turn sixteen without ever having a real conversation with someone from the other side.
For one month, a Delaware home is where that changes. Your family is the place two kids from a divided town learn to trust each other — and your own teen comes home from the month changed too.
Fifty years in, it still only happens if Delaware families say yes. Read our story →
Host families
You need a teen, a spare bed, and a flexible July.
That's genuinely most of it. If you have a 14- to 16-year-old and room for one more at the table, you can do this.
- You don't need to be religious. There are no religious requirements for American families — only an openness to visiting other people's houses of worship.
- You don't need to chaperone. Parents aren't required at daily activities. Most of our parents work. Carpools get the teens where they need to be.
- Delaware teens and families gain real value too. This isn't one-sided hospitality — your teen comes away with documented volunteer and service hours, cross-cultural leadership experience, and relationships that no classroom can replicate. What your family gets ↓
- Service hours accumulate fast. Structured service projects run through the full month, and UPD activities continue into the fall and winter — most Delaware participants finish the year with more volunteer hours than a full semester of community service can offer. Every hour is documented.
- The fee is $225. It covers out-of-town transportation, admissions, t-shirts, and keepsakes.
- Existing commitments aren't automatically a dealbreaker. The month is demanding and many activities can't run alongside it, but if your teen already has something on the calendar, tell us early — we've made exceptions and will try to work around it. Start with a conversation, not an assumption.
- Your family is screened too. Hosting involves an application, a conversation with a coordinator, and the background checks the program requires. It's straightforward, and we'll walk you through every step.
- Applications are open right now. Email us and we'll send you the form. Matching happens in the spring for the July that follows.
For Delaware parents
Honest question: what does my family get out of this?
Fair to ask. Hosting is generous, but it isn’t charity — the Delaware teens are participants, not hosts-in-waiting, and four weeks of this program changes them in ways that show up for years.
For your teen
Fourteen to sixteen is the window when a kid decides what kind of person they’re going to be. This month puts real material in front of them.
- They’re responsible for someone. For four weeks your teen is the matched partner of a visitor who’s counting on them — guide, roommate, and translator of everything American. Discussion nights on identity and reconciliation put them in the conversation, not in the audience. That is a different thing from showing up to camp.
- They talk about hard things with people who lived them. Religion, history, what it means to grow up on one side of a divided town. Most adults never have that conversation. Your teen will have it at your kitchen table.
- Service hours that mean something. Structured service projects run all month and UPD activity continues through fall and winter. Every hour is documented — and unlike most volunteer hours, these come with a story a teen can actually tell.
- Something real to write about. When the time comes for personal essays, scholarship applications, and interviews, the question is always the same: tell me about a time you did something that mattered. Our alumni have an answer. The interviewers who hear it tend to remember it.
- A network on two continents. A best friend in Portadown, a place to stay in Northern Ireland, and a fifty-year alumni community in Delaware who look out for each other.
- Independence with a safety net. Four weeks of responsibility for another person, inside a structure built by adults who’ve done this since 1976. They grow up a little — while you can still watch it happen.
For you
You’re the one signing up. Here is what the month is like from the parent side.
- A summer with a plan. Every day has a schedule someone else built. Carpools are shared. Group leaders run the activities. July is no longer the month you wonder what your kid is doing.
- You get a front-row seat. Sleepaway programs send your teen off and hand them back changed. This one happens in your house. You see the growth while it’s happening, and you’re part of the conversations that cause it.
- Your whole household is in it. Siblings, grandparents, whoever is at dinner. Families tell us the younger kids remember the month as vividly as the teen who was matched.
- A community of parents. Fourteen Delaware families go through the same July together. Those friendships tend to outlast the program by a long way.
- A second family across the ocean. Most host families stay in touch with their Northern Irish teen’s family for years. A surprising number end up visiting.
- Low cost, transparent numbers. $225 for the program. No surprise fees, no fundraising quotas, no gear to buy.
Why it sticks
The teens who do this don’t describe it as a program they attended. They describe it as the summer they figured out they could handle things — a stranger in their house, a hard conversation, a room full of people waiting for them to speak. That confidence is the return. Everything it opens up later is downstream of it.
Delaware teens are 14–16 at the time of the program. Matching happens in spring for the following July.Can't host?
There's a lot to do that isn't hosting
Most of what July needs comes from people who aren't a host family. If a spare room isn't in the cards right now, these are real, needed ways in.
Group leader or chaperone
Help run day trips and activities alongside the four group leaders. No overnight commitment required.
Carpool driver
Host families rely on a shared carpool network to get everyone to activities. An hour here and there adds up.
5K day-of crew
Race-day setup, registration, water stations, cleanup — our annual 5K runs on volunteers, not just runners.
Meals and potlucks
Group meals happen throughout the month. Cooking for fourteen teens once is a real contribution.
Committee & planning
Year-round committee work — recruiting host families, fundraising, logistics — keeps the summer possible.
Alumni & mentorship
Past host families and teens often stay involved, welcoming new families and sharing what the month is really like.
The month
What you're actually signing up for
Northern Irish teens arrive at the start of July and leave at the end of it. In between: discovery sessions, service work, day trips, and a lot of time in each other's kitchens.
Arrival. Teens meet their host families in person, and the group starts daily Discovery sessions — structured conversations about identity, difference, and what they've each grown up believing about the other community.
Service projects across Wilmington, plus visits to a Catholic Mass, a Protestant service, a synagogue, a mosque, and a Quaker meetinghouse. Nobody is asked to believe anything. Everybody is asked to look.
Day trips and shared activities — the part the teens tell you about years later. Beach days, the city, a ballgame. Carpools are arranged so working parents don't have to take the month off.
Retreat and closing. The group names what changed. Then fourteen teens from Portadown fly home carrying friendships across a line they were raised not to cross.
Who comes
The teens who arrive in July have already been through a long selection.
Nobody is put on a plane casually. Each partner town in Northern Ireland runs its own selection, and only a fraction of the teenagers who apply are chosen.
In Northern Ireland
They apply, and most aren't chosen
Teens apply through the Ulster Project committee in their own town. The committee reviews written applications, interviews the teen and their parents, and takes references before anyone is offered a place.
The balance
Balanced by design
The group is deliberately built: equal numbers from each of Northern Ireland’s two main communities, an even split of boys and girls, all aged 14 to 16. Every teen is welcome regardless of how closely they identify with any tradition — what matters is that the group as a whole reflects both sides of the divide. The composition is the point of the program, not an outcome of who applied.
Before they fly
Prepared, and never unaccompanied
Selected teens meet as a group at home before travel, and two adult leaders from their own town travel with them and stay for the month. Your family is never the only adult supervision.
In Coleraine, the town that sent us teens in 2026, one in five applicants was offered a place. The teenagers who make it to Delaware are the ones who convinced a committee at home that they were ready to spend a month with the other side — and their families agreed to it too.
Three towns, one river
Ulster Project Delaware pairs with a different town in Northern Ireland from year to year. All three sit on the River Bann — the same water runs past every one of them, from the Mourne foothills to the north coast.
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Coleraine
County Londonderry · Lower Bann
The northernmost of the three, a few miles inland from the Causeway coast, where the Bann finally reaches the sea. A past partner town — one in five teens who applied was accepted.
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Portadown
County Armagh · Upper Bann
A market and mill town on the river just south of Lough Neagh, in the middle of the orchard country of north Armagh.
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Banbridge
County Down · Upper Bann
The smallest of the three, upstream of Portadown on the road between Belfast and Newry, with the Mourne Mountains rising to the south.
The River Bann, drawn in blue, rises in the Mournes, runs north through Banbridge and Portadown into Lough Neagh, and leaves the lough for the sea past Coleraine.
Our 2027 partner town is Portadown
This July we're paired with Portadown, County Armagh — a market and mill town on the River Bann, in the orchard country of north Armagh. The program, the dates, and what's asked of your family are the same as every year.
Support the project
Host families cover a bed. Donors cover the bus.
Running the program for 100+ family members costs about $75,000 a year, and the $225 family fee covers only a fraction of that. Transportation is our single largest expense — moving the group around Delaware and up the coast for four weeks. We have exactly one paid position — a fractional executive director who keeps the train running on time and holds program quality — and no office. Everyone else is a volunteer, and more than 30 teens and leaders carry this organization’s name each summer. Everything else we raise goes straight into the July program.
Museum admission tickets for one teen on a day trip.
Program enhancements that make the experience great — frames for final dinner awards, keepsakes, and the details that stick with teens long after July.
Supports a full day of programming on one of our day trips — activities, admissions, and logistics for the whole group.
For businesses
Sponsor the whole summer for $5,000
Your name on every teen's t-shirt, top billing across the program, and a direct line to 14 families who'll remember who made their summer possible. Prefer a smaller commitment? 5K shirt sponsorship starts at $375 — your name on every runner.
Ulster Project Delaware, Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit run by volunteers, with one part-time paid staff member. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Many employers match — Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase employees have matched gifts to us this year.
Questions
What families ask us first
If your question isn't here, email info@ulsterprojectdelaware.org and a person will answer.
How much time does this actually take?
For the teen, all four weeks. The program is built on the group being together, so Scouts, sports, camps, jobs, and youth group generally can't run alongside it — it's a serious commitment and we're upfront about that.
That said, it isn't a flat no. If your teen has a commitment already on the calendar — a week of band camp, a standing shift, a family trip, a tournament — tell us early and we will try to work around it. We have made exceptions before. Bring us the conflict and let's talk it through rather than assuming it disqualifies you.
For parents, much less. You're not required to chaperone or attend daily activities. There are evening and weekend events you're welcome at, and carpools handle the rest.
Who's supervising the teens day to day?
Two adult leaders travel with the group from Northern Ireland, and two more are drawn from Delaware — all four are with the teens for the full month, not just the big trips. Think of them as the on-the-ground staff who run activities, handle logistics, and are the first call if anything comes up, the same role a trusted camp counselor plays, but for four weeks instead of two.
Host families handle everyday supervision the same way they would for their own teen, and every host household goes through an interview before being matched. The program itself is run by an executive director with a decade of youth-camp leadership background — see our leadership section for details.
Do we need to be religious?
No. The Northern Irish participants are Catholic or Protestant, but there are no religious qualifications for American families. Everyone is welcome, Christian or not, practicing or not.
The group does attend a Catholic Mass and a Protestant service, and visits a synagogue, a mosque, and a Quaker meetinghouse — so participants need to be open to being in other people's houses of worship and learning what they believe.
What does it cost?
Host families pay a $225 program fee, which covers transportation to out-of-town trips, all admission fees, t-shirts, and keepsakes.
What does our own teen get out of it?
Friends on the other side of an ocean, and a genuine understanding of a history, a religion, and a culture they'd otherwise only read about. The Northern Irish teens go home at the end of the month. The friendships don't.
Delaware teens also come away with a significant bank of documented volunteer and service hours. Service projects are woven through the full month, and involvement continues well past July for teens who stay active with UPD — most participants accumulate more hours in this program than a semester of required community service.
Beyond the hours, this is genuine cross-cultural leadership experience: navigating difference, building trust across divides, and taking real responsibility within a group. That's the kind of thing that goes far beyond a college application or a one-paragraph essay prompt — it shapes how young people move through the world.
Who are the teens staying in our house?
Teenagers selected by the Ulster Project committee in their own town in Northern Ireland, after a written application, interviews with them and their parents, and references. Places are limited and competitive — in past years, about one in five applicants has been accepted.
Two adult leaders from the same town travel with the group and stay for the month, so there is always additional supervision beyond the host families.
How do we apply?
Applications are open now. Email us and we'll send you the form and walk you through the interview and screening. We match families and teens in the spring for the July that follows.
Events
What's coming, and what just happened
The program runs on an annual rhythm — applications, matching, and the month itself in July.
Coming up
- 2027Host family applications open right nowOpen to Delaware families with a teen aged 14–16. Email us for the form.
- 11/7Paint Night FundraiserSt. Mary Magdalen. More details coming soon!
The curriculum
Three strands run through all four weeks
The calendar looks like a busy summer of beach days and ballgames — and it is. But underneath the trips, the month is built around three things the program has been teaching since 1976. Nothing about it feels like school. That’s deliberate.
Peace
Teens who grew up on opposite sides of a divide spend a month unable to avoid each other. The program gives that proximity structure — facilitated sessions, shared worship, and retreats where the group says out loud what changed.
- Discovery Days — facilitated sessions on identity, prejudice, and reconciliation
- Houses of Worship day — Catholic Mass, Protestant service, synagogue, mosque, Quaker meetinghouse
- Ecumenical services hosted by Delaware congregations
- Separate Northern Irish and American retreats, then the group reconvened
Service
Working side by side on something neither teen owns turns out to be the fastest route to trust. Service days are scheduled across the month, not tacked on, and the teens raise money for the program that brought them together.
- Service days with Wilmington-area organizations
- The annual UPD 5K Run/Walk — teens take part alongside the community
- Car wash and other teen-run fundraising
- Documented hours for every participant
Leadership
Every Delaware teen is responsible for a person, not just a schedule. They host, they navigate, they speak in front of the group, and they go home having been the one somebody else depended on for a month.
- Each Delaware teen is the matched partner and guide for one visitor
- Four group leaders model the work daily — two Northern Irish, two Delaware
- Teen-led evening events and closing ceremony roles
- Alumni return as group leaders and board members
Why it’s built this way
Peace, service, and leadership aren’t three separate units on a syllabus — they happen in the same van on the way to the same service site. A teen learns to trust someone by working next to them, and learns to lead by being the person that someone is counting on. Four weeks is long enough for all three to stop being ideas.
The month at a glance
What four weeks actually asks of you
The day-by-day calendar goes to host families in the spring, once dates and venues are set. Here’s the shape of it — enough to judge the commitment before you say yes.
The big three
The trips the teens talk about for years
Three full-day trips anchor the month. They are long days, they are on the bus by dawn, and they are the ones that come up at every reunion.
Washington, D.C.
The monuments, the museums, and the memorials — for teenagers from a country working through its own contested history, standing in front of American monuments to conflict and civil rights lands differently than it does for a tourist.
New York City
The longest day on the calendar and the one most Northern Irish teens have been picturing since they were accepted. Out before sunrise, back near midnight, and worth every hour of it.
Hershey Park
A whole day of roller coasters with no agenda attached — and, not by accident, one of the places where the group stops being two groups. Fourteen hours of queuing together does more than a facilitated session sometimes.
Why we exist
The war ended. The separation didn't.
In 1976, Wilmington was paying attention to Northern Ireland. The violence of the Troubles — the thirty-year conflict between Catholic and Protestant communities that would eventually kill more than 3,500 people — was at its peak. Bombings, acts of violence, and funerals had become the backdrop of ordinary life in Belfast, Portadown, and Derry. It was the kind of crisis that most people watched from a distance and felt helpless about.
Charles and Josephine Robinson didn’t watch from a distance. Charles was a founding member of Pacem in Terris — Latin for Peace on Earth — an interfaith peace organization founded in Wilmington in 1967 by clergy and community leaders who believed that local people had a responsibility to work on global problems. In 1976, Pacem in Terris partnered with Canon Kerry Waterstone of the Church of Ireland to bring the Ulster Project to Delaware. The idea was simple and ambitious at the same time: take twenty teenagers from Northern Ireland — ten Catholic, ten Protestant — and pair them with Wilmington teens for a month. Put them in the same houses, the same cars, the same service projects. Let the distance collapse on its own.
An alum of that very first project, fifty years ago, told us their group came to the airport in the middle of the night — tensions at home were that high.
It worked. That first summer, twenty Northern Irish teens came to Wilmington, were matched with local families, and went home having made friends across a line that, back home, you did not cross. Trust and peace broke out, one teen friendship at a time. The Robinsons and Pacem in Terris had answered a question that most people weren’t even asking: what can one city do?
Delaware has been answering it every July since.
Ulster Project Delaware is now the oldest continuously running Ulster Project in the United States. Since 1976, more than 710 Northern Irish teenagers and 136 adult leaders have made the trip from Portadown, Banbridge, and Coleraine to spend a July in Delaware. Nearly 1,500 teens in total — on both sides of the Atlantic — have been through the program.
The Good Friday Agreement ended the violence in 1998. It didn’t end the separation. Most children in Northern Ireland still go to schools that are almost entirely Catholic or almost entirely Protestant, and go home to neighborhoods that work the same way. A teenager can turn sixteen having never had a real conversation with someone from the other community — not out of hostility, just distance nobody built a bridge across.
That’s the gap this project still closes, and it closes in the least dramatic way imaginable — two fifteen-year-olds sharing a bathroom for four weeks, arguing about music, taking turns on dishes. Peace agreements get signed by governments. The habit of trusting someone you were raised to be wary of has to be learned by people, one at a time, young enough for it to hold.
Half a century later the work isn't winding down. Between a generation that has no memory of the Troubles and neighborhoods still divided street by street, the Ulster Project spurs peacebuilding more than ever.
Fifty Julys on, we still need exactly one thing to make it happen.
Fifty years
On July 19, 2026, we marked fifty years of this.
Fifty years since Charles and Josephine Robinson and Pacem in Terris brought the Ulster Project to Delaware. The anniversary was held at Mauchline Manor in Wilmington, with recorded messages sent from the Northern Irish committees who have been sending us teenagers the whole time.
Nearly 1,500 Delaware and Northern Ireland teens have taken part in Ulster Project Delaware since 1976.
James Donnelly and Johnny Douglas from Portadown, James Hudson from Banbridge, and Phyllis McGraw and Stephen Smith from Coleraine all sent words. Then-Board President Jon Walling and Executive Director Alex Insel spoke for Delaware.
The messages, the videos, and the program from the evening live on in our memories — and in the photos scattered throughout this page.
Governance
Who runs Ulster Project Delaware
Ulster Project Delaware has one paid staff member. Everyone else — the board, the group leaders, the host families — is a volunteer. And every summer, more than 30 teenagers and leaders carry this organization’s name across Delaware and back to Northern Ireland. The one paid role exists to make sure the train runs on time and the program quality holds.
- Current roleNational Director of Startup Programs & Growth, Devereux — a $600M national nonprofit
- EducationPhD in Professional Practice (in progress), Eastern University · M.S. in Education, Johns Hopkins · B.A. International Studies, Washington College
- AlsoAdjunct professor of Business & Finance, Harcum College · Former Teach For America special education teacher
Youth development background
Youth development across three sectors
Before moving into nonprofit program work: a decade with the YMCA in youth development (resident-camp director, teen counselor training), military family programming, and work as a special educator — all centered on the same 14–16 age range UPD hosts.
Board leadership
The board, in their own words
Some of the people who have carried this program for decades — and why they give their time to it.
I have been involved with Ulster Project Delaware for more than 30 years. My family has hosted teens and leaders from all three of the UPD towns in Northern Ireland. I am a retired special education teacher, currently working part-time as a tour guide at a local museum and volunteering as a mentor at my neighborhood elementary school.
In my free time, I enjoy genealogy research and traveling with my husband, children, and grandchildren. Through my involvement with the Ulster Project Delaware, I see a process that unites communities and brings peace to future generations.
When I joined the UPD Board of Directors in 2012, I knew UPD had a history of promoting peace and connection among its young participants, but I could not yet grasp how profoundly it would shape my own life. I served as Discovery Leader for UPD 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 and served as Executive Director from 2016–2026. This work has changed me. It has made me a better listener, a better teacher, and — I hope — a better person.
When I stepped aside from my leadership role within the program, it was with immense pride in what we have built together and with tremendous hope for what will continue to unfold. Although I have stepped down, I have not stepped away from the mission and the community that has become a part of my heart. I look forward to volunteering and working with the Discovery committee.
Our family has been directly involved in Ulster Project Delaware for more than a decade, with all three of our sons participating. We’ve hosted a leader and built lasting relationships with wonderful families we’d otherwise never have met. I’m thrilled to be able to give something back to UPD after all that it’s given to us.
I bring a 30-plus-year career of leading teams and driving results within large corporations to my board role. My focus is to use that experience to make sure we keep creating opportunities for both Northern Irish and American teens to learn to build bridges.
Structure
Board, executive, and program leadership
One paid staff member — the fractional executive director. Everyone else below is a volunteer, including every board member, group leader, and host family.
- Tara Strouss President
- Rob Porter Vice President
- Christina Alejandro
- Julie Bacon
- Erin Browne
- Cristin Buening
- Beth Costello
- Meaghan Dugan
- Jeffrey Jerista
- Cortney Jones
- Deirdre McCarrick
- Kathleen Moore
- Dennis Schofield
- Beth Smith
- Heike Sweeney
Business sponsorship
Put your name behind twenty-eight teenagers building peace this July.
Ulster Project Delaware runs on about $75,000 a year, one part-time paid staff member, and no office. A business sponsorship is the single biggest lever we have — it covers what host family fees and small gifts can’t.
Who this actually reaches
Thirty participants. Hundreds of people touched.
The program has just over 30 direct participants — 28 teens and their four group leaders. But the reach runs far wider than that roster. Every host household is in it: parents, siblings, and grandparents on the Delaware side, and the families back in Portadown who send a child across an ocean and follow the whole month from home. Then there is everyone the group meets along the way — the organizations they serve on service projects across Wilmington, the congregations who open their doors, the museum and day-trip staff who host 30 teenagers at a time, the neighbors at potlucks and closing weekend, and the runners and volunteers at the 5K.
Counted honestly, a single July puts this program in front of hundreds of people. Your name travels with all of it.
- Name printed on every participant’s t-shirt
- Listing on the website’s sponsor section
- One social media thank-you post
- Recognition at the closing ceremony
- Logo (not just name) on every t-shirt
- Featured listing on the website, above Friend-level sponsors
- Two social media posts across the season
- Named recognition at the closing ceremony
- Invitation for two to the closing dinner
- Top billing: “Presented by [you]” on t-shirts and materials
- Logo at the top of the website all season
- Dedicated social media feature and season-long tag
- Speaking recognition at the closing ceremony
- Table for four at the closing dinner
- First right of renewal for next year
Just want the 5K?
Sponsor our Annual 5K Run/Walk instead.
If a season-long commitment is more than you’re looking for, 5K shirt sponsorship starts at $375 — your name on every runner — plus event signage and the registration website. A smaller ask with real visibility on the day.
Not a fit as written?
Packages can be customized.
In-kind gifts, a matched-giving structure, event-day-only sponsorship, a multi-year commitment — if one of the three tiers isn’t quite right, tell us what you have in mind and we’ll build something that works for your business.
How it works
From a yes to a t-shirt with your name on it
- Pick a level, or ask for something custom. Email us and we’ll send a one-page agreement — nothing complicated.
- Send your logo. We handle placement on t-shirts, the website, and event materials.
- We do the program. Twenty-eight teens, four weeks, the same commitment we’ve kept for fifty years.
- You get a tax receipt and an invitation. Ulster Project Delaware, Inc. is a 501(c)(3); come to closing weekend and meet the group your name helped bring together.