This article is from page 32 of the 2008-04-29 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 32 JPG
YOUNG Kilnaboy woman, Sadhbh Gaston, has just returned from a trip to Ethiopia with aid agency Self Help Galkoiwek- le Ceyer: Nema Wales mmole eCennitcae-l beeen! two weeks in the drought prone Af- rican country, Sadhbh is hoping to raise awareness among young people to the good that can be done in the third world.
“We went out there for ten days or so. There were eight or nine schools there – one from Belgium and the rest were from Ireland. We saw a lot of different projects out there like farms, SACCO’s that means Sav- ing and Credit Co-operatives and
schools,” said Sadhbh.
“We went out there to observe so that we could come back and work with them here. The idea is that in- stead of them having to go around to every school and tell them about it, they brought us over to see it first hand and then our job is to tell people about it over here.
“IT think young people wouldn’t be so inclined to listen to these or- ganisations rather than listening to a young person, from their same year, telling them about it. So will be do- ing interview and presentation to as many people as possible.”
Later this week Sadhbh will be sharing her experiences with the
young people of Kilnaboy Youth Club.
‘Self Help did bring us out there but we had to raise the money ourselves in the school to pay our way. We do a charity fashion show in our school each year, and this year we decided to put all of the money raised into Self Help,” continued Sadhbh.
“Self Help have been working in Ethiopia for 22 years. It’s their show country, it’s the country where they first started and they have done a lot of good work there. So we didn’t see the really really impoverished people. One think that some of the teachers noticed was that most of the children had shoes, while on other
trips to Uganda and Malawi most of the children were barefoot.
‘They have been working over there to put in drought resistant crops. So if a bad weather patch comes they are not going to be as effected as they might have been in the past.
“During the day we were complete- ly rushed off our feet while we were out there. But in the evening, while we were back in the hotel or wherev- er, we had a lot of fun with the people we met and made a lot of friends.”