Doolough Famine Walk 2025

Join us on Saturday, May 17th, 2025, in Louisburgh, Co. Mayo, for our annual Afri Doolough Famine Walk, a poignant journey of remembrance, solidarity, and commitment to action. This year’s theme, Sowing Seeds of Change in Remembrance and Solidarity, calls on us to honour the lives needlessly lost during An Gorta Mór—the Great Hunger—by confronting the enduring injustices of our time in solidarity with communities affected today.

History of the Famine Walk
Since 1988, our annual ‘Famine’ Walk has shed light on the parallels between the preventable tragedy of An Gorta Mór in Ireland and modern-day injustices worldwide, calling for action to address grave human rights violations globally. While those in dire need of food and relief died in the haunting beauty of the Doolough Valley in 1849, vast quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England —a fate that occurred all over the island during the ‘Famine’ years, 1845 -1852. These predictable, preventable, and human-made catastrophes occurred and continue, not by nature’s hand, but as a consequence of deliberate policies rooted in greed, dispossession, and domination. These stories of suffering, hunger and starvation are not relics of the past, but a living reality woven into the fabric of our world today, owing to colonialism, war and systemic injustice. This Ceremony and Walk serve not only as an invaluable means of remembrance but also as a continuing renewal of commitment to leaving a different legacy, in fierce determination to imagine and strive for a world rooted in justice, dignity, and equity.

Event Highlights & Structure

11:00 AM – Registration in Louisburgh Town Hall

Walkers will gather in Louisburgh Parish Hall from 11 am for registration. All walkers, even those who are pre-registered, must go to the registration desk to check in and collect their ticket to board the shuttle bus (included in ticket price).

12:00 PM – Opening Ceremony
We will gather at Louisburgh Parish Hall for the Opening Ceremony, featuring conversation, live music and thought-provoking reflections on An Gorta Mór and its parallels today from renowned speakers.

Speaker and Performer Highlights
Clare O’Grady Walshe – Seed Keeper, Author, and Expert in Seed Sovereignty and Globalisation

Paul Laverty – Award-winning Screenwriter, Lawyer, Humanitarian and Storyteller.

Eman Mohammed – Senior Ted Fellow and Award-winning Palestinian Photojournalist

Farah Elle – Libyan-Irish Progressive Musician Whose Distinctive Voice Reveals Something of the Beauty in the Ephemeral Every Day.

12:50 PM – Shuttle Buses to Walk Starting Point

Walkers will be shuttled to the walk’s starting point, where a short tree-planting ceremony will take place before the walk begins. The bus takes approximately 20 minutes. Toilet facilities will be available at the starting point. Please note that no parking is available at the starting point, so walkers must take the shuttle bus.

1:30 PM – Doolough Famine Walk
Following a short tree-planting ceremony at the starting point, we will embark on the Doolough Famine Walk. This 17-km journey retraces the steps of those who journeyed or died in the Doolough Tragedy in 1849, honouring each one as a human with a name, hopes, dreams, and fears. On return to the Louisburgh Parish Hall, each walker will receive a Certificate of Completion.

Why Walk With Us?
As we walk in memory of all who died, whether by starvation or disease, not forgetting those displaced, we stand in solidarity with those all over the world for whom the experience of deprivation, destruction and death is a current reality. This event compels us to see how history is repeating itself, particularly in Palestine, where starvation is being weaponised as a tool of genocide, and urges each of us to heed the call of shared struggle for more just futures as ancestors to be. Your participation also supports Afri’s vital work in education, campaigning, and solidarity. By walking, we defy indifference to injustice and commit to building a future where no one is abandoned to hunger or violence.

Book Your Place Today!
Spaces are limited. Secure your ticket now and join a community of remembrance and resolve. Please note that if the cost is a barrier for you at this time, you can reach out to admin@afri.ie confidentially.

Next Steps:
Stay tuned for the event brochure, which will provide further details, including detailed speaker and performer biographies, information about parking, toilet facilities, and a sponsorship card. Please don’t hesitate to contact admin@afri.ie if you have any questions.

We look forward to seeing you at this unmissable event!

A conversation with Caoimhe Butterly

Live from Lesvos, Greece. Friday, February 21st, 2025, 11am-12pm Irish time: Frontlines of Solidarity – Migration, Human Rights, and Solidarity. 
Hosted by IDEA (Irish Development Education Association) in association with Afri, Comlámh, Doras, the Irish Refugee Council, and Uplift.
Free registration but donations welcome to Caoimhe’s choice of refugee solidarity cause.
Free registration at www.tiny.cc/frontlines25 
ABOUT CAOIMHE BUTTERLY
 Caoimhe Butterly (educator, activist & trauma-informed psychotherapist) joins us live from Lesvos island in Greece, where she has worked for periods of the past 11 years with refugee solidarity/ support & Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) networks there. Greece is a place of both transit and in limbo, where refuge-seekers from Afghanistan, Palestine, Congo, Syria, Sudan, Eritrea, Iraq, Somalia, etc., remain in camps in which both humanitarian support & access to rights remain below the basic. With the militarisation & externalisation of EU borders & prevalent pushbacks, the narratives of those on the move are often made invisible. Caoimhe joins us to speak of some of the stories of those she has worked with, as well as the broader context.

Afri’s Hedge School 2024 at TU Dublin Blanchardstown

On Wednesday, November 13th, 2024, we held our 12th annual Hedge School in partnership with TU Dublin in Blanchardstown. Our Hedge School harks back to the informal gatherings in Ireland that provided education at a time when strict laws suppressed schooling. This history serves as a reminder of how dominating powers can restrict, withhold, or distort knowledge. Today, our annual Hedge School holds space for humans’ innate need to share, learn, and take action for a just, equitable, and sustainable world.

This powerful student-led event delved into the justice issues of Palestine, housing, and gender equality, framed within the very apt theme of the Hedge School ‘Human Rights for Humanity’. The video below beautifully captures the workshops, speakers, discussion, stalls, music, art, and, of course, tree planting. Together, we explored pathways of solidarity, centred on Fannie Lou Hamer’s words: “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

Blood Fruit

At the premiere of "Blood Fruit" in Galway: (from left to right) Theresa Mooney, Karen Gearon, Sinead O'Brien (film director), Cathryn O'Reilly, Liz Deasy, Michelle Gavin, Sandra Griffin, Joe Murray (Afri) and Mary Manning.
At the premiere of “Blood Fruit” in Galway: (from left to right) Theresa Mooney, Karen Gearon, Sinead O’Brien (film director), Cathryn O’Reilly, Liz Deasy, Michelle Gavin, Sandra Griffin, Joe Murray (Afri) and Mary Manning.

 

Blood Fruit will be shown on TG4 on Wednesday 22nd October at 9.30pm and Sunday 26th October at 11.30pm

 

Blood Fruit  recounts the story of ten exceptional young workers in Dunnes Stores in Henry Street who took the courageous decision to refuse to handle ‘the fruits of apartheid’ in 1984. This decision was to have major consequences for the workers themselves – being locked out for more than 2 years – and internationally as the story became known around the world. It resulted in a rare and amazing victory when the Irish Government banned the importation of fruit and vegetables from South Africa.

The film relays the experience of the daily drudgery on the picket line as well as their invitation to address the UN, their meeting with Desmond Tutu en route to receive the Nobel Peace prize and their abortive visit to South Africa where they were held by armed police before being sent home on the next plane. This is a compelling and inspiring story which should be compulsory viewing for people of all ages, reflecting what is best in human nature – the ability to empathise with the suffering of others even in faraway places and to express solidarity to the point of making a real and significant difference.

Nelson Mandela had said that the action of the strikers had helped him during his imprisonment and, in a message sent to the strikers via Afri for the premiere, Archbishop Tutu saluted them, describing them as ‘a beacon of hope’ and ‘part of the history of South Africa’s struggle for freedom’.

Afri supports Palestinian Appeal for Solidarity and Humanitarian Intervention

The on-going humanitarian crisis in Gaza has in recent times once more reached such a level of frenzied depravity that it is too easy to become frozen in a kind of shocked paralysis. The fact that it comes amidst a persecution by the Israeli powers of the Palestinian people that has spanned many decades and the earthly lives of countless Palestinian souls, makes it seem all the more unjust and no less intensely disturbing.

Horribly stuck in a traumatic historical time warp, it is as if the crimes of past wars have achieved the ultimate victory over humanity by the perpetuation of these same crimes by their victims on other human beings.

The parallels between the terrible crime against humanity that was the genocide of the Jewish and other people by the Nazi regime, and the crimes against humanity and apparent genocide being conducted by Israel against the Palestinian people today, are so obvious that it seems redundant to even speak of them.

Yet in the face of an impotent international political system and an international community that, for the most part, remains resolutely silent in the face of such crimes, then failing to speak of these parallels (when recognising the sovereignty of all life) is a kind of treason: a betrayal not just of innocent Palestinian civilians but of humanity everywhere. Continue reading “Afri supports Palestinian Appeal for Solidarity and Humanitarian Intervention”