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Volunteering | FEATURE


Like the other letters, press clippings and various bits of ephemera that Guy collected over these weeks, the letter from Weilimdorf is inserted into his diary. The letter is fi lled with a simple crayon drawing of the Nativity scene. The names of the children are written above it in typically juvenile, large-scale lettering. It is the most moving item in the diary, and, in the purity and sincerity of its message, the most palpable evidence of the Trinity Refugee Campaign’s worth.

...and it didn’t end there…

In the aftermath of the campaign, Guy got together with some like-minded students to set up a body which would help refugees in more general ways. On 1 June, they signed a constitution for the University Refugee Committee – a sort of ‘think tank’ comprised of members of various college societies that would meet twice a term to discuss refugee issues.

The run-in to summer 1960 was marked by intense fundraising activity in and around College grounds. The fundraisers used the same means that had succeeded in raising money for the refugees in Germany a few months previously – coffee mornings, shoe-shine stalls, concerts and other such events.

As another College year wound down in June, Trinity News, in an editorial, refl ected on the previous weeks’ activity. "At midnight on Tuesday, World Refugee Year came to an end in most countries around the world; it did so offi cially in TCD. Many will ask what were the results in this comparatively small but very cosmopolitan university… Students collected about £1,200 from their fellow students, from the staff, and the public."


Terence Read

Terence Read M.A. (1963), a contemporary and life-long friend of Guy Milner, was inspired by the events of winter 1959 to become more involved in helping refugees.

“I spent a lot of the time between 23 November and 2 December, 1959 dashing between the ‘campaign offi ce’ in Guy’s rooms at No 3 Front Square and the collection point the other side of Front Arch”, he says, recalling his involvement with the Christmas Presents campaign. “We produced Christmas cards and sold them from the stall at Front Gate, that’s what I remember most.”

Today, Terence is most involved in the charity Support for Afghan Further Education (SAFE), which he founded in 1990. He traces his interest in Afghanistan to a visit to the region in the early 1980s, when the country was under Soviet occupation. Charity and philanthropy is a full-time commitment for Terence. Never too long goes by before he is fl ying off to another part of the developing world to check on the progress of a project he is involved with. Each trip is a journey of hope, each one an extension of a larger journey that began 50 years ago in Trinity College.

www.safeafghanistan.ie


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