Wexford Echo
30th September 2009

In 1977, an Irish sportswriter first announced his intention to fight global poverty by raising, delivering and spending IR£12,000 on a street children’s feeding programme in Calcutta.

From the time he stepped off his return flight to Dublin up until the present day, the same man has generated close to €600 million for aid projects and dispatched over 1,500 nurses, doctors, accountants, engineers and other professionals from all over Ireland to work in more than 50 countries in the Developing World.

One of those volunteers is Louise O’Rourke from Castlebridge, who has been working as a GOALie for the past six years. Next month, she will follow the path trodden by O’Shea in 1977 when she flies to India to oversee the implementation of the organisation’s aid programmes and thereby continue the work that her boss first started 32 years ago.

Since she decided to leave a successful career with Wexford Borough Council behind her in 2003, Louise has visited and worked in seven countries for GOAL. Although she admits it is a role which has presented many challenges, she describes her decision use the skills she had acquired in the preceding eight years to help the aid agency implement its many humanitarian and life-saving projects in the Developing World as “definitely the right move to make”.

“My decision to seek and ultimately take the job with GOAL came down to my inherent curiosity, my desire for adventure and travel, but most of all, it came down to the fundamental feeling that I could use my skills and qualifications more wisely and with more satisfaction working in post-conflict or developing countries,” explained Louise.

Six years on from that radical change in livelihood, Louise says she is excited about taking over as GOAL’s Country Director (CD) in India, where the aid agency acts as a donor, capacity builder, mentor and guide to local agencies seeking to reduce poverty and its impact on communities through several education, health, water and sanitation and livelihood programmes.

“It will be a big change from the last four and a half years when I was based in Africa, although there will obviously be some similarities as well. I’m looking forward to remaining in the one place, directly managing and being centrally involved in the programmes and working with the GOAL India national staff, who are a very experienced, competent and committed team.

From October 2007 up until recently, Louise had been employed by GOAL as a Donor Compliance Officer, tasked with ensuring that GOAL’s numerous programmes conformed to the myriad of requirements dictated by the donors who finance many of the projects.

This roving technical advisor role brought her to Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan and Zimbabwe, where she worked and lived in a range of multi-cultural, striking and ultimately challenging environments.

Inevitably, these regular visits to GOAL’s projects in the field brought her face-to-face with the hardship and suffering that the poorest of the poor are regularly forced to endure – and their courage and strength in the face of adversity.

She remembers the Mukuru slums in Kenya, where 600,000 people were seeking out a perilous existence at the side of a city that would rather have forgotten they existed. She also spent time working at an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Darfur, Sudan, where 25,000 victims of the one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters had been living in makeshift shelters for the previous four years.

Those field visits were distressing, but even the bad days were punctuated by moments of illumination which served to provide Louise and her GOAL colleagues with hope, no matter how bad the situation.

“I remember walking through the camp in Darfur and just being bowled over by the number of women and children who waved and smiled at us and even approached us with some attempt to exchange a few words. 

“The women were all colourfully dressed; the children played with make-shift balls and sat happily on sacks of food carried by donkeys. “It was a privilege to be there and to see the people living in hope of a better existence, despite the hardships and terrors that they had endured and continue to endure. I can’t imagine living in such circumstances and after being there nothing else was required to convince me of the need to do more to address the situation.” 

India is a place that Louise is not wholly unfamiliar with, something that would have been to the forefront of John O’Shea’s mind when he needed someone to step in for GOAL as Country Director on the Subcontinent

During an extended break in 2007, she took the opportunity to travel to India and covered a lot of ground in six weeks. She also visited a number of GOAL’s programmes during that time and learned a great deal about the organisation’s current work in the country.

Her time in Africa also included a one and a half year term as Assistant CD in Ethiopia, a role that will serve her well in her upcoming position, although she admits that some of the challenges will be different from what she is used to.

“As CD in India, I will be dealing with programmes that are implemented with local partner organisations, while in Ethiopia it was largely direct implementation by GOAL. We have a small team of 14 in India, while there were 300 people working for GOAL in Ethiopia. So there are some new dynamics, a different set up programme-wise and it will be very interesting.”

Managing GOAL’s projects in India will once again bring Louise close to people and communities who are struggling to survive, but she already knows that the country is about far much more than that. Few countries in the world are as diverse; it’s a nation of over one billion people, 350 major languages, several religions and an environment which encapsulates deserts, forests and snow-capped mountains, not to mention a potpourri of customs, traditions, hobbies and rituals. Despite the poverty, it is also home to some of the most ambitious and educated young people in the world.

“I have seen a lot since I joined GOAL - more than most people would see or experience in a lifetime - and it is important to me to see the realities of life and experience it through travelling and working in developing countries, meeting and working with wonderful people, realising the different ways of living and experiencing all the cultures and traditions because it is enriching and educates me in a way that books never can,” she explained.

“India will be another learning curve and I'm looking forward to it.”