Roscrea Girl Helps Ease The Suffering In Haiti   You are in · RoscreaOnline · Community · People Profiles

Hurricanes, floods, political instability, poverty, disease and a regular atmosphere of fear. Just a sample of the many tribulations that must be faced by Roscrea girl Deirdre Delaney on a regular basis in Haiti where she works for world-renowned international non-governmental organisation Concern.

This week we talked to Deirdre about her job in Haiti and we briefly outline the background of a person who recently left the relative safety and security of an Irish classroom for a job that has immersed her in a life of danger and instability in a Country where its people face a continuous battle for survival.

Deirdre is the daughter of Sean and Lillian Delaney from Main Street, Roscrea. She took up residence in Haiti approximately five months ago as Documentation Officer for Concern. Haiti occupies the Western third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola which it shares with the Dominican Republic. It continues to be the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The life expectancy is 49 compared with 78 in Ireland. It has a population of close to 9 million yet is only half the size of our country.

Deirdre tells us that the polictical situation in Haiti is very unstable making it a very dangerous place to live and work. It is a country plagued by political voilence for most of its history and its capital city Port-au-Prince is a place engulfed with fear making simple day to day activities such as shopping and traveling extremely dangerous. Apart from this couldron of terror and hostility the inhabitants of Haiti also endure regular natural disasters such as hurricances and flash floods. Last year saw two severe floods in the country; one in the northwest and one in the south, as a result of Hurricane Jeanne. It was disasters like this that convinced Concern to start working in Haiti in 1994 after the trail of death, disaster and destruction left by Hurricane George. The last two years has also seen a significant devaluation of the local currency and a consequent rise in the price of basic foodstuffs. This has led to concerns from many International Agencies about the possible unfolding of a humanitarian disaster in Haiti. It is against this backdrop that Concern and workers like Deirdre Delaney are working relentlessy against in order to avoid what would be another crippling disaster for the Country.

As documentation officer with Concern, Deirdre is responsible for setting up and maintaining knowledge management within Concern Haiti. This entails developing and maintaining a filing system for all documents (paper and electronic). She also ensures that good quality reports are received by the head office in Dublin and by Concern donors on time. She is also responsible for developing written procedures for the appropriate use of the filing system and training all staff in how to use them. Deirdre also trains staff on appropriate methods of report writing etc. Deirdre’s academic background and previous life experiences have helped groom her for this extremely demanding and challenging role. During her studies for a BA in European Studies at the University of Limerick, Deirdre worked in Germany and Le Harve in France where she perfected her foreign languages. However it was during her fourth year in college that she began to develop a serous interest in human rights. The crisis in Kosovo was very prominent in the news at the time, however the island of East Timor had at that stage generated little if any media attention despite the terrible tragedies unfolding there. After a year of research, Deirdre produced a thesis entitled The International Arms Trade With Indonesia And Its Implications For East Timor for which she received a first class honours grade.

When she left college Deirdre was still a little uncertain as to what path her life would take. Her thesis had unlocked a great thirst for knowledge in the human rights field and she immersed herself in researching this whole area, which eventually led to a scholarship for a Masters Degree Course in Human Rights and Democratisation. The course was run in Venice, Italy and proved to be very intense with classes six days per week. Every imaginable topic related to human rights formed the syllabus for the year, which also included a field trip to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Deirdre and the rest of her class made up of eighty students from twenty nine different countries spent two weeks travelling the country visiting many of the national and international organisations that now make up the fabric of this war thorn country. Part of the trip involved meeting people who had lost everything including family members, their homes and jobs etc as a result of the war. The trip more than any research before, made a lasting impression on Deirdre and helped open her eyes even further to the evil and injustices that are so prevalent in the world today and therefore she left Bosnia-Herzegovina with the tremendous determination and inward desire necessary to complete her course.

For the second semester of the Master’s, Deirdre had to write yet another thesis. Part of the project involved sourcing a supervisor from a country other than that of your native country. Eventually Deirdre secured help in the Ruhr-University in Bochum, which meant she had to move to Germany. There she studied with 30 other students on topics such as emergency preparedness, war crimes and international law. Interestingly during this time the students visited the International Human Rights Court in The Hague where they attended the trial of Slobodan Milosevic.

Before returning to Venice to defend her thesis entitled Human Trafficking: Modern Day Slavery And Lucrative Criminal Business, Deirdre also completed a Landmine Awareness Course and a First Aid In The Field course with the German Red Cross at a NATO base in southern Germany.

Following her Master’s success Deirdre decided to take some time off to do some travelling. Her journey with three friends from Roscrea took her to Thailand, Australia and then America before returning in time for Christmas 2003. However she said it took some time for the work to start coming through. All the international organisations wanted people with experience. Deirdre however was unfazed and became a substitute teacher in the Sacred Heart Primary School in Roscrea. Eventually she succeeded in securing a job with Concern for a post in Afghanistan, which was to begin in the middle of February 2005. However, during the elections in Afghanistan last October, three UN workers were taken hostage and Concern decided to offer her the same job in Haiti instead.

Before completing the interview Deirdre told us a little more about Concern whose defining mission is to enable poor people to achieve major improvements in their lives, which are sustainable without ongoing support for Concern. To this end, Concern works with the poor themselves and with local and international partners who share our vision to create just and peaceful societies where the poor can exercise their fundamental rights. Concern’s core competencies focus on five organisation wide programmes: health, primary education, livelihood security including microfinance, HIV/AIDS and emergency response. Concern is the only Irish aid agency in Haiti. Concern’s aim is to work in the 40 poorest countries of the world; so far the organisation has programmes in 30 of the 40. Concern Worldwide has operated in Haiti since 1994 and currently employs 80 staff in five offices situated around Haiti. The programme, which started as an emergency response to Hurricane George, has now grown into a longer-term development programme. If you want to find out more about Concern’s work in Haiti and around the world, the website address is www.concern.net or indeed if you would like to contribute financially to their work or get involved in a challenge to fundraise for people needier than you, all you have to do is check out the website or call 1850 410 510. Alternatively you can keep up to date with Deirdre’s work with Concern through www.roscreaonline.com.