Vol 9 • Issue 3 • Winter 2010
Le Chéile
PAGE 5 NEWS IN BRIEF WORLDWIDE RISE IN
MASSIVE INCREASE IN CALLS
TO SVP Calls for help to the Society of St Vincent de Paul are up by 50 per cent this year in some areas, while online donations to the charity are down 30 per cent, its vice- president has said.
John Monaghan, speaking at the start of the society’s annual appeal, said some of the people who would have contributed to the appeal had found their worlds “turned upside down” by the recession.
Outlining some of the cases of people who had come to the society in recent weeks, he said a family in the east contacted them and had €11 left at the start of the week. “They had no food in the house, were in arrears with electricity and gas bills and their washing machine had broken.”
CHRONIC HUNGER Over 1,000,000,000 people now suffer chronic hunger worldwide, according to figures revealed at gorta’s World Food Day Conference at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin on 15 October.
In his address at the conference, Brian Hanratty, CEO of gorta said: “With the world population projected to grow from 6 to 9 billion by 2050 the quantity and nutritional quality of food needs to increase dramatically and agriculture has a critical role to play in poverty reduction and improving food security.”
The disturbing threshold of 1,000,000,000 hungry people in the world was reached in part due to soaring food prices and the financial crisis. In response the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has launched the ‘United against Hunger’ campaign calling on Governments and civil society along with the private sector to work in partnership at all levels to defeat hunger, extreme poverty and malnutrition.
Addressing the conference, President Mary McAleese said: “…Banishing hunger from our world is not a one person operation, nor will it be accomplished by spectators. It is a huge task, not an impossible or insuperable task, just a huge task and like all huge tasks it needs a team effort in order to be successful.”
COLLABORATE TO INNOVATE
Do you need help with collaborating with others to either save money or to achieve more? If so, you may be interested in applying for the Collaborate to Innovate Programme. Funded by the Vodafone Ireland Foundation, and brought to you by The Wheel in association with Prospectus Strategy Consultants, this unique programme for community and voluntary groups could be the answer. Find out more at
www.wheel.ie/collaborate or contact
elizabeth@wheel.ie.
WINNER OF
GOSAVE.IE
COMPETITION Congratulations to Linda McGarry, Fundraising Manager at Young Social Innovators (YSI), who won the
gosave.ie competition in our previous issue. She received €5000 worth of personalised
gosave.ie discount cards.
SPECIAL OLYMPIC HEROES
BRING HOME GOLD
Ireland’s Special Olympics athletes excelled at the Special Olympics European Summer Games in Warsaw in September. The team returned with a medal tally of 10 gold, 8 silver and 11 bronze medals.
Riobard Lankford from Cork won the first medal for the team - silver in badminton. The 34 athletes, from all over Ireland were among the 1,600 athletes from 58 countries who participated in the Games, the largest sporting event for the Special Olympics movement in Europe/ Eurasia in 2010.
The theme of the Games was ‘Together Now’ and it called on European communities to come together in support of the Special Olympics movement and its promotion, through sport, of a better world, where every person regardless of their ability or disability, is accepted, welcomed and valued – a word of inclusion and mutual respect, without bias or prejudice.
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