The real story behind your Trócaire box

Ambika Paraja, nine, is the little girl fronting this year’s Trócaire Lenten campaign. Claire O’Sullivan travels to Jhilligoan, India, to discover how Trócaire has helped to change the lives of Ambika and her family

I DON’T know where the Trócaire box sits in your house. In mine, it’s always on the window sill above the kitchen sink. And so every time I have washed my hands in the past few weeks, I have felt the staring brown eyes of a nine-year-old Indian girl who was chosen to be the face of this year’s Lenten campaign.

Each Lent, when a new box goes up, the same questions go up from my sons. Who is that girl and why is that box there again? And so begins an often hilarious conversation about how there are things in life — such as education, clean water, and being fed every day — that millions of other children in the world can’t depend upon. But each year, as they get older, these simple questions become more difficult to answer as the young boys balk at the injustice of it all.