Give me Hope: 1. Lisa De Jong and Louise Joyce ; 2. Sean Kelly and Cassie Buckley; 3. Beata Romanovsky and Paula Byrne. (Pix. Richie Stokes)
Two Clare women - Olive Halpin and Maureen McCarthy - had a vision, a vision of hope and out of that hope grew the Building of Hope project. It all began in 2006 when Olive spent three months in Missionvale, Port Elizabeth on the Eastern Cape of Africa and saw at first hand the people of the township who are living in dire poverty and who are ravished by the HIV virus. Olive returned home but did not forget Missionvale. Something had to be done.
A team of volunteers both skilled and unskilled are made up of block layers, roofers, plasterers, electricians, plumbers, tillers, flooring and ceiling specialists, painters, paving specialists, stonemasons, landscapers, doctors, nurses, hairdressers, cleaning specialists, water runners. They came from all over Ireland for the 2010 project and constructed a state of the art polytechnic and have left a legacy to the people of Mombasa. The Volunteers constructed the project in 28 working days.
The Building of Hope’s Project for 2012 is the construction of a Residential Home for blind orphaned children in Likoni, Mombasa and the charity hosted a fundraiser at Bojos35 on Harcourt Street. Taking time out from her busy recording schedule was Mary Black a patron of Building of Hope.
To help the project visit www.buildingofhope.org
