BANGOR – The idea to bring the flags together in the shape of a shamrock came to Danielle Harrison while she was over the Atlantic Ocean.

“I was just doodling in my notebook on the plane and it just happened,” Harrison, 16, of Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, said Thursday.

Harrison, a Protestant, is one of 11 youths from the tiny British territory who are participating in a program designed to help Catholics and Protestants work together to find peaceful ways to resolve conflict.

The Penobscot Job Corps Center on Union Street in Bangor is hosting the program, scheduled to end Monday.

Harrison’s design is one of the things the group will leave behind as part of a permanent mural on the wall of a room in the Job Corps Center’s recreation center. The young people were putting the finishing touches on it Thursday as their two-week visit wound down.

“There’s the Union Jack for the Protestant side and the flag of Ireland for the Catholic side and they’re coming together in the shamrock, which is an Irish symbol,” the designer explained, pointing to the half-painted design. “The American flag [in the top two leaves of the shamrock] shows we came together in America.

“There’s going to be a dove in the middle,” she added, pointing to an empty circle in the shamrock’s center.

The young people, ranging in age from 16 to 21, are the sixth group since the summer of 1998 to visit Maine under the auspices of the Spirit of Enniskillen Trust.

Inspired after a 1987 bombing in the town of Enniskillen, the program takes Catholics and Protestants abroad to learn tolerance. It was established by Gordon Wilson, whose daughter was among 11 Protestants killed in the 1987 explosion at a local war memorial. Although the Irish conflict often is described as a religious one, Fergal Quinn, 17, a Catholic from Portglenone, said Thursday that it’s a political conflict that pits those desiring independence against those who want to remain a part of Britain.

“The Catholics generally are nationalists and the unionist are generally Protestant,” he said.

Neighborhoods are segregated and students don’t have the opportunity to cross religious lines in their daily lives. In discussion with Job Corps student, they have learned that many of them have experienced a similar problem

“We’ve had discussion with inner city youth who face similar problems, or worse ones, because of neighborhood gangs,” Ryan Hamill, 16, a Catholic from Larne, said.

Since 1989, more than 700 young people and adults have participated. The program sends groups to witness how people from different backgrounds are learning to live together in such places as Cyprus, Israel, Germany and South Africa, as well as such U.S. cities as Seattle.

The Bangor Job Corps Center’s involvement stems from its connection with former U.S Sen. George Mitchell, a much-loved figure in Northern Ireland for his role in brokering the Good Friday peace accord in 1998. The agreement was aimed at ending 30 years of “the troubles,” the partisan conflict that cost thousands of lives.

Although the violence has lessened a great deal during their lifetimes, young people in Northern Ireland don’t stray far from their parents’ political views, said James Neill, 18, a Protestant from Ballymoney.

“The program doesn’t try to change your point of view,” Quinn said. “It let’s you understand a different perspective and challenges you to think about why you believe what you believe.”

That kind of understanding is essential for an enduring peace in Northern Ireland, agreed the Enniskillen participants.