With limitless reward

NEW LIFE:Séamus Gleeson moved from a career in the Defence Forces to setting up a charity to support vulnerable children

IN 1984, news footage of famine victims in Ethiopia famously prompted Bob Geldof to organise Band Aid. But many years earlier, television images of conflict and suffering in Africa had sparked a quieter revolution in the mind of another Irishman.

Those 1960s images eventually inspired Séamus Gleeson to move on from a career in the military and to co-found Touch Ireland, a charity that supports vulnerable children in Africa and Asia.

“I was about eight or nine and I remember seeing one of the first news reports in black and white, and it stayed with me,” says Gleeson, who grew up in Kildare. “I remember not being able to understand how we could see people dying of hunger on TV and not want to, or be able to, do anything about it.”

Life moved on and Gleeson became an aviation technician with the Defence Forces, got married and had two sons. He still felt the pull to help alleviate poverty, but it wasn’t the time to down tools and go abroad.

“There are certain times in your life when you can go off and do certain things but in the late 70s and 80s I didn’t have the whereabouts or the time to go off and do something,” he says, describing how he looked closer to home for opportunities to help.

“I decided to look and see if there was something else I could do in Ireland. Because we can talk about things, down the pub or with friends, and say I can’t do that and they are probably right. But there are a lot of things you can start to do.”

So he organised “aircraft pushes” to raise money for various causes in the 1980s. “It was the time of bed pushes but we had to be different,” he recalls. “We got an old crashed civilian Cessna that had been bought for training but we painted it up and put pushbars on it. You couldn’t do those things today on the motorways, that day is gone.”

His fundraising work brought him in contact with the Cheshire Homes in Ireland and, after a successful career with the Defence Forces, he eventually retired and managed the Cara Cheshire House in the Phoenix Park, a facility for adults with physical disabilities.

While at a conference in London, he met Rita Tumbila from Zambia who needed provisions for a Cheshire Home for children orphaned by HIV/Aids. Together with colleague Pauline McHugh, they organised a container of goods to be sent out and accompanied it over.

“We saw the orphanage first hand and it was heart rending. It was, in theory, for kids from birth to five but there were kids there of eight or nine. The question came up, where do the kids go when they get older?” he recalls.

“A lot of them went out to what was considered extended families but in a lot of cases some were taking in the children hoping they would get food support for themselves and their own families. Then if that wasn’t forthcoming some of the children were being dumped on the streets. So when we came back home we looked at the possibility of building a second orphanage for the older kids, and that’s what we did.”

The group, originally called Cheshire Aid Zambia, raised funds in part through Irish people sponsoring children with €25 each month.

It’s a small sum but it has a big impact, says Gleeson: “That makes a huge difference to a child out there, it feeds and clothes and educates them. And you are not just sponsoring that one child, this is your link into this project, you will get a report on this child but your money is helping all of these children.”

And as they expanded into projects to support vulnerable children in India, Sri Lanka and Nepal, they changed the name to Touch Ireland, which signifies the loving touch between parent and child, he explains.

They now run close to 50 projects, including centres, aid containers and sponsorship to directly support 7,000 children and link in with wider communities. And everyone at Touch works for free, including Gleeson.

As the organisation grew, he took a bold decision to leave his paid job at the Cheshire Home.

“My blood pressure went through the roof and one morning I said to my wife ‘I’m going to pack in my job’,” he recalls. “She was training to be a nurse and her salary would be coming online, and the kids were out and about and not depending on us. So I thought if I am ever going to try to do these things, now is the time to do it.”

And living on less hasn’t been that much of a struggle in the end. “The reality of it is, you sit back after a while and ask what was I doing with the money I had? I could have been putting it to better things. I am obviously less better off than I was, but I don’t feel any worse off.”

On a day-to-day basis, finding running costs for Touch is the most challenging aspect, according to Gleeson.

“We have a very simple ethos – 100 per cent of the funds our people raise go to the projects. So we try to get 10-15 companies to give us €1,000 per year for running costs,” he explains, but adds that the recession is biting. “We have lost a few companies and this year is going to be very difficult for us.”

But on a personal level, the rewards are limitless for Gleeson. “You won’t stay involved with something unless you get something out of it. It may not be financial but you get something out of it, whether it’s the satisfaction that you are doing something or that you are making a difference.

“Plus I meet great people every day of the week.”

For more on Touch Ireland, see touchireland.bluewaterroad.ie