Society cannot help without the support of the community

LAST year the St. Vincent de Paul in Dundalk spent in the region of € 400,000 on directly supporting families and individuals in the Dundalk area.

All of that money was contributed directly by the people of this town either through our annual and monthly church collections or through sales in our two shops.

It is gratifying for us to know the you, the people of Dundalk, value our work, and this was shown recently in a survey undertaken for the Dundalk Credit Union by Amarach Research which revealed that SVP is the most important charitable organisation in the town.

The Society has been serving the people of Dundalk for the past 163 years and was founded at a time when the town was a much different place than it is to-day. The widespread failure of the potato crop as a result of the blight during the previous seven years had led to a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration.

The Great Famine ‘ An Gorta Mor’ as it was called caused the deaths of approximately one million people in the country, about two fifths of the population.

I recall this watershed in the history of our country for in the year after that seven year famine ended, the St. Vincent de Paul Society was founded in Dundalk, tasked by its founder Frederic Ozanam to bring the love of Christ to those we serve in the spirit of the Gospel message: ‘I was hungry and you gave me to eat’.

Frederic Ozanam was born in Paris in 1813 and as a young man witnessed great poverty and constant social disruption in the aftermath of the French revolution. A man of broad vision and deep faith, Frederick Ozanam asked his church what it was doing for the poor of Paris.

He did not wait for the answer and in 1833 he formed the first Conference on Charity to distribute food and fuel to the poor in Paris in their homes.

It is therefore very comforting to all our volunteers to realise that 20 years later the good people of Dundalk recognised the same need in their own community, and the words of their founder inspired the members of the first Conference to meet in Dundalk in the rooms of our great Cathedral, St. Patrick’s ‘if two or three come together to do good, their union will be perfect’.

In the 163 years since that first meeting thou- sands of Dundalk volunteers, men and women, have eased the burden for countless families and individuals in our community.

They have been able to do that work because of the generosity of townspeople who donate so freely to our appeals.

Today the needs of our people differ greatly from the post famine days of 1853.

The 180 volunteers who are currently members of the nine Conferences spread throughout the town and district are working quietly among those needing help. They are finding many affected by low income, high levels of debt, unemployment, educational disadvantage, poor health, addiction, violence, loneliness, disabilities, overwhelming caring responsibility and other challenges.

One of those great challenges is the one of addiction and how it can impact on the lives of families. This year a number of our Conferences have had to deal with a families being terrorised by drug dealers because family members had run up a debt that was due to the drug dealers.

We were able to alleviate some of the anxiety under which those families are living, not by paying off the drug dealer, but by and supporting the family in other ways.

Sadly that situation is the new reality in Dundalk to-day.

But the Society believes that it is not enough to provide short-term material support. Those we serve must also be helped to achieve self sufficiency in the longer term for the sense of self worth that it provides.

When the problems we encounter are beyond our competence, we build bridges with others who can provide more specialised support.

A major part of our work in providing that support is through our visits to the homes of those seeking our help, and it is a bedrock of our Society to never judge and to always respect the dignity of those we visit.

I myself have, over the last ten years, visited countless homes in Dundalk and while I have been shocked at times by the levels of deprivation and poverty that I have encountered, I have personally found great reward in thee work that we do on your behalf and have come to value greatly the support that we receive from the public.

One vital part of our work is to identify the root causes of poverty and social injustice in our town and, in solidarity with those in need and the disadvantaged to work for change and to create a more caring society.

Our sincere thanks most go to you, the people of Dundalk on behalf of those in need for your continued support and many of us are inspired by one of the seeds of wisdom that we have inherited from Blessed Frederick Ozanam when he said ‘charity is the Samaritan who pours oil on the wounds of the traveller who has been attacked. It is justice’s role to prevent that attack’.