Top fundraising students return from Rwanda
Friday, 1 September 2006
Two Enniskillen pupils have recently returned from a 9 day visit to Concern projects in Rwanda. Conor O'Keeffe and Conor McCaughey, both 18 and from St Michael's College in Enniskillen, were selected for the trip when their school raised a massive £12,500 for the Concern 'Fast Friends' campaign last December.
The pupils joined Concern Youth Officer Mariclare Gallagher and their teacher Lisa Carlin for this experience of a lifetime. Over the course of the trip they visited various Concern-funded projects in the north and south of Rwanda, including child survival, education and community development programmes. Conor leaves us in no doubt about the huge impact of the trip:
"We have heard so much in school about the work Concern does overseas, but despite seeing photos and hearing stories nothing could have prepared us for what we saw and experienced in Rwanda.
"The child survival projects were both the most enjoyable and the most difficult experiences we had. One of the difficult times was while spending time with a group of mothers children at a feeding centre in the south of the country. We met a girl called Mary who had been at the centre for just one week. She was only two years younger than us, but her life, so far, has been a world away from how we have lived. Mary is suffering from chronic malnutrition; she hadn't had a proper meal in a very long time. We thought she was much younger than 16 when we first met her, she only came up to my waist and when I shook her hand it was half the size of mine. We were told how she had been beaten and burnt and locked in a room, her story will stay with me forever, but so will the song that she and the other children sang for us. It was a song of greeting, thanking us for our company and wishing us a safe trip.
"Everywhere we went, the people we met thanked us for the support and encouragement of Concern and asked us to continue to help as they built a life for themselves and their children. Knowing we have helped Concern be there for these people was a fantastic feeling, and made me realise just how easy it is for us to make such a difference."
