John O'Shea Talk

By Cathy Keogh

On the 20th of October, John O’Shea, the founder of GOAL, came in to talk to all of the TY students about social entrepreneurship and the importance of having social entrepreneurs in our society. GOAL is an Irish charity that works in over 60 countries providing humanitarian aid.

John, now retired, came to talk to us as he believes that we, as the next generation, are the future of change and the way forward in tackling the major issue of homelessness globally. We can make a difference in how governments deal with conflicts and hunger. We can be the next Gretta Thunberg, all it takes is a couple powerful emails to powerful people to make a change.

From this talk, I learned that governments give grants to NGOs, like GOAL, to deal with humanitarian issues so they feel like they no longer have to deal with problems present in their country. I believe that it is important that we as the youth try to mold a government that deals with problems like war and homelessness head on and doesn’t delegate to smaller NGOs that have no real control over countries. GOAL believes in a world where poverty no longer exists, where vulnerable communities are resilient, where barriers to well-being are removed, and where everyone has equal

rights and opportunities.

In 1984 Ethiopia was suffering a great famine. Close to 8 million people were affected by this famine and over 1 million people died. This was the largest famine of the time. GOAL responded to this crisis by sending nurses, doctors and engineers over to Ethiopia to help set up a vaccination program and a food distribution program. To this day GOAL continues to offer nutritional help to many families in need in ethiopia.

John talked about how many government officials have not been brought to propper justice after committing grave crimes against their own people. An example of this was the mass genocide in Rwanda in july 1994. John was one of many GOAL representatives that went over to Rwanda at the time to offer aid. 800,000 people were said to have been killed in this mass genocide and yet the people who were in government than are still in government now. How are we supposed to make a change when countries are not being held responsible?

This talk was extremely eye opening to the amazing work of the charity GOAL and how little work the government actually does to fight and combat homelessness in the forgotten world. John was right, it is time for the younger generation to give the forgotten world a voice and help fight homelessness worldwide.