This article is from page 31 of the 2007-12-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 31 JPG
AS charities across the country begin their Christmas appeals, Sixmilebri- dge man Kevin Byrne is busy rais- ing the profile of Concern – Ireland’s largest aid agency.
Fondly known around Dublin’s Rathmines as the Clare man with the Dublin accent Kevin has seen first hand where the money raised by the chairty goes as he has spent much of is career working abroad.
“T have been on the Iraq Jordanian border, Liberia, Somalia, Tanzania and Bangladesh,” he said.
His mother, Christina Wallace is now living in Mounthsannon having spent many years in Dublin. Kevin’s uncle, Jim Hoban, is well known in rugby circles in Shannon and is a past president of St Senan’s Rugby Siti
Kevin makes sure to set the record straight about his Clare genealogy before talking about his 20 years with Concern.
“T started working with Concern the day after my 29th birthday and I can honestly say it was the best birth- day present I ever received.
“And I would not still be here if I did not believe that Concern makes a difference helping the poorest of the poor around the world,” he said.
He came to Concern back in 1988 having spent ten years working as a spray painter and panel beater. His first job involved packaging material for distribution to the 800 schools taking part in the famous Concern Se Nierhwrhie
It was not long before he was posted to the Iraq Jordanian border in 1990 where he was assisting refugees from Kuwait, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
“IT was allocating people to their tents and it so happens that I was working with two Ennis men, Mike McDonagh and Noel Moloney.
“Then in 1991 I spent four months working on the Liberian Sierra Leo- ne border. I was based in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. My job was mak- ing sure that Concern goods shipped into Freetown in Sierra Leone were safely delivered to Liberia.
It was a war zone at the time. Im- agine, we had just one satellite tel- ephone which was shared among all the NGOs. We had one fax machine
available to us in Freetown. I often spent all day there until I learned how to ‘wheel and deal’ and manage to get to skip the queue,” he said.
When he arrived in the Somali cap- ital, Mogadischu, in 1992 on a UN aircraft he was greeted with gunfire all over the city.
“It was gunfire day and night every day and it was my job to find some- Where for Concern staff to Stay. There was absolutely no infrastruc- ture, everything had been looted.
“In Afghoi, about 30 kilometres from Mogadischu, we were feeding
2,00 people every day. There were people dropping dead in front of us. It was terrible,” he recalled.
During the Rwanda emergency Kevin was part of the Concern Emer- gency Response Unit and spent nine months on the Rwanda Tanzanian border, based in the Kagera region.
“For the first two months I was involved in managing a camp for 10,000 people. I was then seconded to the World Food Programme where we were distributing food. We began supplying food to 40,000 people and that number grew to 250,000 in a
very short time.”
Between 1996 and 1997, Kevin spent 14 months working with the British High Commission in Bang- ladesh and also helped Concern na- tional staff to improve their report- ing skills in Concern’s head office in Dhaka.
These days Kevin is working in Concern’s head office in Dublin where he is in the customer relations department.