Education for Liberation in Kildare town

‘Hunger in a World of Plenty – Sowing Seeds of Hope’

Afri’s second of three ‘ Education for Liberation’ events, on the theme of ‘Hunger in a World of Plenty – Sowing Seeds of Hope’ took place on Thursday, 18 March 2010, in Kildare town. About 100 students aged 15-16 years old from 4 different schools in the Kildare/Laois region participated in the event.

Food and hunger have been issues of central concern for Afri since its inception 35 years ago. Afri was founded to respond to the scandal of hunger in a world of plenty, a situation which, unfortunately, has worsened rather than improved in the intervening period.

Afri believes in tackling the causes of hunger rather than merely responding to the symptoms. Those causes include the arms trade (costing a staggering €1400 billion annually); the neo-liberal economic system, which concentrates large amounts of resources, including food, in the hands of a small number of people; climate change and global warming; and the corporate takeover of food production, resulting in food being treated as a purely commercial product, thus denying access to the people who are most vulnerable.

The participants in the Education for Liberation event were addressed initially by Aoife Rush, Brendan Forde and Joe Murray and went on to explore the underlying causes of global hunger in 4 different workshops that were facilitated by Aoife Rush (Trócaire), Áine Ni Fhlatharta (Irish Seed Savers), Jenny MacDonald (art facilitator) and Pete Mullineaux (drama facilitator).

We want to say a special word of thanks to all those who contributed to the success of the day and the workshop facilitators for their great work. A big thank you also to Cross and Passion College in Kilcullen, Colaiste Iosagain in Portarlington, Presentation Secondary School and St. Joseph’s Academy in Kildare for their great support for our work.

We also want to thank Trócaire and Irish Aid for their support of our development education programme.

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