|  November
2004
Each week Micheal O’Muircheartaigh, the much loved and unflappable
voice of Gaelic Sport, sees heroism on sports fields up and down
the country. Recently though, he witnessed fortitude on a different
scale in the daily struggle of people in the slums of Calcutta which
he visited with GOAL.
Micheal was one of a small party of journalists which accompanied
GOAL boss John O’Shea to Calcutta in mid November and was
confronted by poverty and squalor the like of which is usually confined
to nightmares. They also saw the work that GOAL is doing to help
alleviate it.
Speaking on RTE Radio’s Pat Kenny Today programme on his
return, Micheal said his first impression of Calcutta was the sheer
numbers of people living on the street and the levels of poverty.
“It is one thing to read and hear about it but until you actually
see it for yourself you don’t really understand” he
said.
In one slum Micheal and the rest of the party saw people washing
and drawing water from the filthiest canal imaginable - the same
water supply was being used by cattle and pigs. Waste and filth
were piled everywhere attracting swarms of rats and flies.
Preferring to look at the progress being made however, Micheal,
a former teacher, was interested in the work that GOAL is doing
to give street children informal education and vocational training.
He described visiting one of 75 schools where GOAL has installed
latrines and said that, “…although it might seem like
a drop in the ocean in a city of 15 to 18 million people, the way
I see it every little drop makes life better and more tolerable”.
“I never thought I’d see the day when the official
opening of a school toilet was a major event, a momentous occasion”
he said, and went on to describe the glee in a teacher’s face
when a simple tap was installed in his school – the first
in the school’s 40 years of existence.
The big message that Micheal brought away with him was how far
the money donated to GOAL goes. He described a new school in an
area called the Sunderbans, in the Ganges delta, that GOAL had built
and equipped for “…not too far over €15,000”.
“If you got one look at how the money you give to GOAL is
spent” he said, “you’d give them double”.
If you would like to make a donation towards GOAL’s humanitarian
work in India and elsewhere you can do so by sending what you can
to GOAL, PO Box 19, Dun Laoghaire. Phone 01 2809779 to make a credit
card donation, or donate online at www.goal.ie
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