Ronan Scully has a great understanding of the situation in Africa and is sure he can help people such as those in the photos with sustainable projects.
Ronan Scully pictured with some of the young beneficiaries of the Self Help Africa programmes in Ethiopia.
Operation Transformation star and renowned fundraiser Ronan Scully is undertaking the Great Ethiopian Run again this November, and is looking for volunteers to join him. Scully has already signed up close to a dozen participants to run and walk with him on the annual event, a 10km walking and running challenge through the heart of Addis Ababa on November 22nd.
A number of places are still left on the expedition, and Mr Scully is on the lookout for any participants who would like to join them. To take part, competitors are asked to raise at least €3,000 in sponsorship support—which will cover all costs of a trip that will also include tours of the city and a short field trip to see Gorta Self Help Africa’s work in rural Ethiopia.
With his role as a business developer for Gorta Self Help Africa, he understands better than most the challenges faced by families all around Africa: “Since I started working with Gorta Self Help Africa the entire focus has been on food—and particularly how it can be grown in difficult conditions and tough climates in the developing world. I may have had my own struggles with food in the past, but the weight loss challenges that I faced on Operation Transformation are absolutely nothing to the ordeal that millions of Africans face in putting enough food on the table and providing for their families, simply to survive.
“These issues have come into sharp focus with the famine and drought in parts of Africa at present, but at Gorta Self Help Africa we are continuing to say that while we must respond to the emergency, we can only help to bring an end to these terrible stories if we provide people with the wherewithal to live a life free from hunger and poverty. At Gorta Self Help Africa we are doing that by providing farming communities with good quality seed, by supporting the development of irrigation, and by a whole host of other measures that can give people some protection from the kinds of problems they are facing in parts of Africa today”.
Ronan with Berela and her child Yeabsira in the Sodo Region of Ethiopia.
For Ronan, the plight of the people of Somalia, Kenya, Malawi, West Africa and Ethiopia is particularly troubling. An adoptive father of two little girls from Ethiopia, he says that it has been particularly tough to watch the pictures of the famine on the news bulletins, or explain to four-year-old Sophie and an 8 year old Mia what is happening in the country of their birth:
“It’s hard to explain to your children that there are people dying of hunger in the world, and particularly so when we know that this is not a disease they are suffering, but a situation that can be cured very easily.”
Self Help Africa has been working in Ethiopia for more than 30 years, and has supported more than one million of its people to increase the amount of food that they produce, and increase the amount that they earn from farming in that time. Scully says that the reason for Self Help Africa to focus on farming is simple, too—pointing to the fact that 80 per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa live on small farms, and to studies that show that the vast majority of these farms have the potential for greater productivity.
“As the name suggests, Self Help Africa believes that the solution to one of the biggest challenges faced by Africa is in the hands of the people themselves. Provide African farmers with better access to seeds, with training and with the knowledge that will make them better farmers and you will solve a problem that we have been wrestling with for the best part of half a century.”
To find out more or to get an application form for the Great Ethiopian walk or run contact Ronan Scully on (087) 6189094, visit www.SelfHelpAfrica.org or email [email protected].
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- Last year’s Great Ethiopian Run and Walk. Photos by Andrew Downes.
