One special activity of the Society in Northern Ireland has been it's long standing relationship with the Society in Ghana through a 'Twinning' arrangement stretching back to the 1960s. Twinning is a union of prayer, correspondence and mutual aid, as an expression of charity within the Society. It has enabled many self-help schemes to get going at relatively little operating costs and has given the Society the opportunity to respond quickly to disasters and famines, as well as initiate more long term development work. But how do you 'twin' with people living in a different continent with a different culture and a different way of life, thousands of miles away? That's the challenge facing the Northern region's new twinning committee as it looks forward to its first year in office. The answer is to think 'bonding' and to bring individuals into contact with one another so that they can better understand each other;s problems.
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Twinning with Ghana in Africa |
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"For too long Ghana has been a distant place with contact restricted to a few reciprocal visits, the occasional letters between conference presidents or formal appeals for help with special projects," says Rita Mannion of the twinning committee. "Communications have improved greatly and the internet, particularly, has made it possible to have an immediate knowledge of what is happening in the National Office and conferences in Accra. Hopefully this, in time, will include conferences in more of the outlying areas of the country."
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Individual ContactWe now want to see closer contact between individual conferences in the northern region and an increase in the number of volunteers visiting the West African State.
House Building Project - August 2003
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Last summer the late John Walls took a group of 24 Vincentian volunteers to Assin in the Province of Foso in Ghana where they assisted in the building of 12 bungalows for the native people. click here for more... It takes in the region of £1,000 to fund an individual volunteer's visit to Ghana and whether supported by sponsorship or paid for in part or whole by the Society, such an investment is an invaluable means of bring the two regions together. | Reducing the impact of disastersIt was the St Vincent de Paul's International body that first invited the Society in Ireland to adopt Africa in a bid to reduce the impact of war and natural disaster in the second largest of the continents, three times the size of Europe back in the 1960's.
The Society in Ireland is linked with 13 African countries. Northern Ireland has responsibility for links with Ghana. Projects the Society have sponsored in Africa include the boring of wells, vegtable and poultry schemes, building of schools and hospitals, providing tools, medicines, books and seeds for poor farmers. 
In 1992 the SVP in Northern Ireland sent £525,000 in aid to Somalia
click to enlarge Read our Special Edition of Vincentian News back in 1992 |
