A man blinded by a rubber bullet when he was a 10-year-old schoolboy in Derry is to address a conference with the British soldier who shot him.

Richard Moore and retired Major Charles Inness will speak at the Festival of Spiritual and Peace in Edinburgh next month.

Moore was coming home from school in May 1972 when he was hit by the bullet fired by Inness who was 10ft away. "It struck me on the bridge of the nose. I didn't even hear the bang of the discharge. All I remember is everything going black," he says.

Moore lost one eye and the sight in the other. Four months earlier his uncle, Gerard McKinney, had been killed by British paratroopers on Bloody Sunday. Moore went on to found the charity, Children in Crossfire, which raises money for projects in Ethiopia and Tanzania.

Moore wrote to Inness in 2005 and the pair met the following year. "Meeting him was very positive for me," he says. "I told him I forgave him, that I had always forgiven him and had never been bitter."