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Volunteering | FEATURE
Refugee Children Campaign, 1959: A Journey of Hope
"How refreshing… to see Trinity playing such a forward role in World Refugee Year. In this Refugee Week, capital has been made of the large number of people who are willing to turn their hand to something really worthwhile during their spare time instead of sliding into the coffee bar to down endless draughts of steaming coffee... Guy Milner and his band of philanthropists are to be congratulated."
An editorial in the 27 November, 1959 edition of A College Miscellany.
What started as a joke…
In late 1959, Swedish-born, London-raised Guy Milner was in his third year at Trinity, where he was studying Chemistry. He was 23, slightly older than the average third-year student, on account of having done, a few years earlier, a stint of military service at Sandhurst and two years of teaching. He had rooms in College, at No 3 Front Square, to the side of Front Arch and above the postmaster’s office.
On 7 November, a curious notice appeared in the Evening Mail. It read: "I would like to draw your readers’ attention to a way in which they can greatly benefit the World Refugee Year. There is an organisation in this city which has volunteered to renovate old dolls, golliwogs, teddy bears, etc, at their own expense, and then sell them in the approaching festive season, all proceeds to be sent to the World Refugee Fund. I would be very grateful if readers could send any such remnants of happy childhoods to me at the address below… Guy Milner, Student Representative, World Refugee Fund, 3 Trinity College, Dublin.
Later that day, Guy had an epiphany – he decided he would turn what was actually a practical joke to good account. Guy, today, recalls his eureka moment. “I was walking back from a lecture across College Park when I had a vision of an aeroplane, leaving Dublin, loaded with presents. To me, it was very real. It was a call to service.”
...becomes a call to service…
Over the course of the next few days, Guy would knock on the doors of some very infl uential people indeed. It seems that within hours of his epiphany in College Park, he was mobilised for action. His diary from the time indicates an impressive series of appointments and ‘cold calls’ to newspaper offi ces, businesses, charity groups and politicians.
It became quickly evident on that fi rst morning, Monday, 23 November, that Trinity’s refugee appeal had provoked a huge response. The campaign had been well publicised, for sure. Guy’s accounts show that 1,100 posters, 41,000 handbills and 2,100 car stickers, donated by a variety of printing fi rms, had been distributed around the city. But it was also clear that the swell of people who came to donate goods was not due simply to hype. Guy sensed that a basic charitable impulse had been tapped.
“It was as if the dam of human selfi shness had burst, he records of the fi rst few days collecting. “The steady trickle of Monday morning became the torrent of Tuesday and the fl ood of Thursday. Tins and tins of biscuits, bars and bars of chocolate, lovely new toys by the score, cakes and puddings too, children’s clothes – every conceivable gift arrived.”
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