REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE LAUNCH OF LINK COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT’S (LCD) LINK SCHOOLS PROGRAMME
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE LAUNCH OF LINK COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT’S (LCD) LINK SCHOOLS PROGRAMME PARTNERS IN DEVELOPMENT
A dhaoine uaisle, is cúis áthais domsa bheith anseo libh inniú. Míle buíochas libh as an chaoin-chuireadh.
I would like to thank Niall Roche, Chair of Link Community Development Ireland, for his kind words of welcome and also Cathal O’Keeffe for the invitation to launch the Link Schools Programme this evening.
Education is an awakening to our own potential and to the world around us. It is a gift and an opportunity that is not equally distributed in our world and wherever there is poverty or underachievement you can be sure there is a lack of education. Here in Ireland the advent of free universal second level education at the end of the 1960’s began a process of transformation of Irish life from poverty to progress. Our experience of the surging individual and collective power that comes through education and our generation’s long experience of generous outreach to the poor nations of Africa are an important context for the Link Schools Programme. It is a modern manifestation of the concern we have for the children of the Third World and of the faith we have in education as a pathway out of poverty and into economic growth and social progress. It is of course also more than that because this is not a conventional aid package where the funds of anonymous donors help the lives of anonymous recipients. The Link Schools Programme is about person to person links. It is about a journey of friendship, support and solidarity between pupils and teachers in Ireland and in Uganda, South Africa, Malawi and Ghana. It is about developing a strong commitment to global justice, a better understanding of development issues, a respect for other cultures, ethnicities and perspectives, a sense of shared responsibility for ending the awful waste of endemic poverty in our world and delivering an up front and personal engagement between the Link’s participants across continents.
Among us, this evening, are several Global Teachers who have done summer placements in Uganda, where they put their skills at the service of Ugandan colleagues involved in the LCD’s Uganda School Improvement programme. They also brought back to Ireland a first-hand account of life in Africa, one that is often overlooked – the stories of courage and hope, of progress made against the odds, of men, women and children doing heroic things in order to help themselves and others to reach their fullest potential.
Link is an all-island programme and it is wonderful to see its influence at work in classrooms all over Ireland from Holywood in Co. Down to Carrigaline in
Co. Cork and from Donaghmede in Dublin to Ballina in Co. Mayo. There is a saying ‘What is learned in childhood is engraved in stone’ and what better time to introduce understanding and tolerance about one another than at the earliest possible stage in a child’s primary education through an initiative that encourages respectful curiosity about one another and offers a real bridge to each others lived lives. Link is a pathway to an assured and confident sense of global citizenship.
It is faithful to the view of education described so graphically by Yeats when he said it is “not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”.
From Link’s work we have the chance to influence the adult thinking of today’s participant children from Ireland and Africa so that they remain throughout their lives, partners and friends, their lives entwined in ways that build on the valued tradition of Irish Missionaries and NGOs and the work of Irish Aid. The Irish proverb “Ní neart go cur le chéile” - “Together we are stronger” is at the heart of what Link is about and I hope that its future legacy will be visible in strong cultural, political and economic links as well as a rock solid, active mutual solidarity.
It is very appropriate that we are launching this project today in European House for the European Union is the largest donor of development assistance in the world and Ireland has consistently used its position within the Union to focus on solidarity with the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world.
Woodrow Wilson once said: "Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together." The Link Schools Programme is building those friendships. It has important financial and strong moral support from both the Irish Government and the European Union. These things allow us to look forward to more and more Irish students and teachers forming learning partnerships with their African counterparts. They will become skilled in navigating this complex world; they will be more confident global citizens and leaders of a vibrant, inter-connected global community.
Ireland and Africa will benefit from having among us, people with such a broad experience and education. My thanks to all in Link Community Development who have constructed and developed this invaluable initiative for schools which I am delighted to launch and to wish well as it generates exciting learning partnerships that no other generation has known.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh.