This article explores the interview narratives of 98 Northern Irish participants (consisting of NGO and community group leaders, development officers, and civil servants responsible for funding grassroots peacebuilding work) regarding their hopes and fears for the future. These civil society leaders expressed a wide variety of hopes and fears addressing both the micro grassroots and the macro political levels of society. An analysis of these expressed hopes and fears is both instructive and significant. Civil society peacebuilding actors have been given significant voice in the Northern Ireland peace process. The findings reveal significant hope that reconciliation work at the grassroots level will be successful, but conversely, they also reveal noticeable fear regarding the political peace process and the resumption of political violence.
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