| Tommy Fleming, Sunday Tribune, 23rd July
2006
Many people have earned my utmost admiration for a variety of different
reasons over the years, but the one person who has truly gained
hero status for me is John O’Shea, the CEO of the international
humanitarian agency GOAL.
I first met John when we both attended a dinner in Dublin Castle
in honour of President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. After all the
formalities, John and I got talking, and my first reaction was,
“Jesus! Where does this guy get off?” I thought he was
the most arrogant ass I had ever come across, but as I spoke with
him, I became enthralled at what this man had done for the street
children of Calcutta, and the starving people of many African nations.
I came to realise as I got to know him that what I thought was arrogance
was actually intelligence, and actually, when I look back on it,
I has been working for years with people with far less ability and
far more arrogance.
I was also seriously impressed at John’s ability to get
people like me to leave a comfortable and cushy (well, not that
cushy!) life, and head to Africa to work there. He has a way of
getting something out of people, and I went originally to Sudan
to do a publicity mission for GOAL for a couple of weeks in 2001.
I ended up staying on to work as a GOALie in Bar-el-Gazal for three
and a half months, working in all areas of the project – food
distribution, logistics, medical relief etc.
John O’Shea has an overwhelming abundance of passion for
his work, and it’s actually mind blowing when you stand back
and watch him in action. When I was in Sudan, it always amazed me
how the words, “can’t be done,” just don’t
exist in John’s vocabulary. He’s a very logical thinker,
but his idea of logistics is hilarious at times, because when people
say, “We can’t get that food drop in there,” his
response is always, “What do you mean by can’t? –
we will get it in there”. And he makes it happen!
John first became involved in the Third World when he saw a television
programme in 1977 in which Fr Pat O’Mahony was sending tea
chests of medical supplies out to various third world outposts.
He was a sports journalist with the Irish Press at the time, and
he called Fr Pat and offered to help. Having spoken to him, John
decided to go out to Calcutta to help with a feeding programme,
and he quickly realised that it wasn’t a very effective one
because the strong were pushing the weak out of the way. He also
saw that thousands of children were being killed through a lack
of knowledge about simple things, like cutting the umbilical cord
with a clean instrument, immunisations, and using clean water.
He became friendly with two Indian paediatricians there, who still
guide GOAL to this day, and together they worked on providing a
training centre to teach young Indian women good mother-child practices.
He also started programmes to take child prostitutes off the street,
and give them an education.
When John started his work in Calcutta, he was, and still is,
married to Judy, and they had four children, Stephen, Lisa, Karen
and Johnny, After working as a journalist during the day. John used
to go in GOAL from 3pm until midnight, until he began working solely
in GOAL in 1992. He was obviously a great man, because I’ve
met his family and you can see the respect and love they all have
for him. It must have taken a lot of guts, determination, and love,
to look after his family, work at his job, and keep GOAL going all
at the same time, but he did it all to his full potential. All of
the O’Shea family are involved in a voluntary capacity with
GOAL, and Lisa works there full-time. She came out to Sudan while
I was there, and she’s fantastic too – its obvious that
the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree in her case.
John O’Shea is a man I admire for his arrogance (if that’s
possible), his drive, his passion, and most of all for his value
on human life. While you can’t give him your opinion on how
things should be done, he has absolutely no ego and is not there
for the applause. He has a one-track mind and is driven by the value
he places on human life, and for what is right and wrong. GOAL has
projects in approximately 15 Third World countries, and no matter
what colour, creed, race or gender is involved, John’s stand
is always the same – that GOAL can do something to help. He
has complete tunnel vision when it comes to Third World issues,
such as hunger, child prostitution, Aids, and all the other afflictions
that blight these countries. He’s the most opinionated person
I know, but I can honestly say that it’s the frustration with
corruption and the autocracy of many of the countries that GOAL
works in, that drives him in his work. The way he challenges these
issues and the people behind the corruption and all the red tape
is enviable, and when I look at some of the bullshit attached to
the music industry, I often wonder how he would deal with it!
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