Trócaire puts sheep, trees and ovens on Christmas list

TRÓCAIRE is appealing for funds to buy gifts of sheep, cashew nut trees and solar powered ovens for poor people around the world this Christmas.

Yesterday, the development charity began its Global Gifts campaign to encourage people to give 'real, practical and life-changing' presentsto friends and family.

In return for buying a Global Gift in the name of a friend or family member, Trócaire will send a Christmas card to that person with details of the project the gift has paid for.

"Our follow-up monitoring since 2000 has confirmed that the Trócaire gifts are having a lasting impact among poor communities. Indeed, lives have been saved by people's generosity at Christmas," said Trócaire director Justin Kilcullen.

For 15, 50 cashew nut tree seedlings will be sent to a family in Ecuador, a country which saw one third of its cashew nut trees destroyed by Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

For 25, an adult in a developing country will get the opportunity of learning to read and write through 30 hours of literacy classes. Trócaire can provide clean and cost-free solar ovens to families in Guatemala and Honduras for 150, while for the same price, farmers in drought-stricken areas of Africa will receive a water pump to irrigate their crops. All of the gifts are designed to make communities self sufficient, following the accepted wisdom in the proverb: "Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime."

Last year, Irish people spent 2.4 million buying 71,000 global gifts. Trócaire was able to provide around 22,000 sets of schoolbooks to children in Somalia, 14,000 pigs to families in Columbia and 2,500 ox ploughs to farmers in Mozambique. More than 2,000 people disabled by land mines during the 27-year-long Angolan civil war received artificial limbs and around 4,000 people in Sierra Leone, many of them victims of another vicious war, were provided with kits to learn a trade.

Trócaire spokeswoman Eimear O'Hehir said she had encountered one of the many Ethiopian people who received a global gift.

"I accidentally bumped into this woman, Nigasty Kindeya, 30-year-old single mother with four children. She had been given a goat and was able to feed her children with the milk and sell more of it at the local market," she said.

Global gift certificates can be purchased at Trócaire and Veritas centres, by calling 1850 408 408 or by logging onto www.trocaire.org.