Trócaire launched its 39th Lenten campaign earlier this week, with a competition.
Primary school children all over Ireland are being invited to design the well-known Trócaire box for next year’s campaign, which will mark the Catholic relief agency’s 40th anniversary.
The winning entry will feature on the 2013 Trócaire box, which will be distributed to 1 million homes, schools and churches.
“We decided to ask primary classes to design our 40th anniversary Trócaire box in recognition of the tireless efforts of teachers, parents and pupils across Ireland on behalf of the world’s poor,” said Justin Kilcullen, director of Trócaire.
Schools have until Friday, April 27, 2012, to submit their designs.
Meanwhile this year’s campaign focuses on Uganda, which has recently emerged from a brutal 20-year civil war.
The war claimed tens of thousands of lives and forced as many as two million people from their homes.
Although the conflict is now over, according to Trócaire, people have lost everything and must now pick up the pieces of their lives.
The campaign will focus on attempts to help communities get back on their feet, rebuilding their farms and their lives following the devastating conflict.
Speaking at the launch of this year’s campaign, Justin Kilcullen noted how the Trócaire box had not only changed the lives of families across the developing world, but also impacted on the lives of thousands of young people here in Ireland by teaching them about the world and the, “injustice faced by communities in the developing world.”
He went on, “A staggering 925 million people go hungry in our world, but thanks to the efforts of teachers and schools, the poorest and most vulnerable people have never been forgotten by the Irish public and our young people have grown up with a better understanding of the world around them.”
Kilcullen said that even with the cutbacks in their own sector, teachers were still making time to, “encourage pupils to look beyond Ireland and learn about the world.”
Trócaire was established in 1973 with a mandate to raise awareness in Ireland about global poverty in the developing world and its education programme, in hundreds of schools across Ireland, is part of this work.
Its Lenten campaign and the Trócaire box is one of the oldest and most established fundraising campaigns in Ireland, which raises approximately €8 million to fund Trócaire’s long-term development programmes.