GAA star Alan Kerins has raised more than €1 million to fund development in Zambia and has set up the Alan Kerins African Projects to continue this work. Michelle McDonaghreports
WHEN GALWAY sports star Alan Kerins decided to "take some time out" in 2005 and bring his skills as a physiotherapist to a centre for disabled children in Zambia, he never imagined how the experience would change his life.
Deeply moved by the depths of deprivation he witnessed in one of the poorest regions of Africa, Kerins promised to raise €5,000 to provide clean drinking water. Three years later, he has raised more than €1 million to fund a variety of development programmes in western Zambia and has set up the Alan Kerins African Projects to continue this work.
In January 2005, Kerins travelled to the town of Mongu in western Zambia with nothing more in mind than a short three-month stint as a voluntary physiotherapist in a local centre for physically disabled children.
He spent three months at the Cheshire Home for Physically Disabled Children run by Irish nun Sr Cathy Crawford and the Presentation Sisters in Mongu. The previous winter, Zambia had experienced its poorest rains in 77 years and drought threatened to ravage the area around Mongu, an area three times the size of Ireland perched out on the tip of the Kalahari Desert.
He recalls: "I didn't know what was ahead of me when I decided to go to Zambia, but what I saw has changed my outlook on life forever. I was dumb for the first few weeks observing and sharing the hardships that the Zambian people face 24 hours, seven days a week.
"Street children begging for food, clothes, money. Families living in shanty towns with no water, no basic facilities. Hundreds of thousands of people living in squalor, absolutely filthy conditions with no hope of escape. It left me saddened and appalled."
Kerins saw at first hand the devastating effect that the HIV/Aids epidemic is having on every household in Africa. For example, the chef in the Cheshire Home struggles to look after 16 children - seven are his own and the other nine are his nieces and nephews orphaned by Aids.
He was also moved by a frail elderly lady he met who had lost her 10 children in two years to Aids and malaria, leaving her with the responsibility of caring for her 15 orphaned grandchildren.
"It's very difficult also and very disturbing to walk through the dilapidated hospitals and see and smell people on death's door suffering so badly in appalling conditions. On occasions, the electricity will fail leading to the freezers in the morgue to shut down. The smell of decomposing bodies in the searing heat is gut wrenching," he says.
Kerins returned to Galway with the objective of raising €5,000 to provide clean drinking water for people who had to walk over 10km each day for water. Since then, his fundraising efforts have taken on a life of their own and he says he has to pinch himself at times when he realises what has been already achieved through his volunteers and the generosity of the Irish people.
Since March 2005, the Alan Kerins African Projects has provided food aid to some 10,000 people, built schools catering for 5,000 children and provided bore holes and wells for clean drinking water and crop irrigation for 60 villages and 3,000 people.
A firm believer in teaching self-sufficiency, through his charity, Kerins has helped to teach farming techniques and provide farming supplies and equipment to some 5,000 people.
He has also helped to build new houses for local families through a building block project and is continuing to help fund the Cheshire Home in Mongu.
Kerins has been working as a physiotherapist in Galway since he graduated from Trinity College seven years ago. The former senior inter-county dual star made it to both the football and hurling All-Ireland finals in 2001, but these days, he concentrates on hurling.
He returned to Zambia in 2006 with a TV3 camera to make a documentary which aired last Christmas to help raise awareness of the situation there. He is going back out in November with a group of intercounty GAA players from around the country to oversee the current projects.
He says: "There is so much to be done out there. We need to continue to develop schools, build housing for orphans and to help with the running costs of the Cheshire Home. We want to look at developing a community and sports centre in Mongu and to continue to teach self-sufficiency in farming techniques."
Kerins points out that there is a great need in the impoverished region of western Zambia for physios and other healthcare professionals to volunteer their skills.
• A Dublin volunteer group has recently been set up to assist the Alan Kerins African Projects and their first event is a Night at the Dogs which will take place on Friday next, October 3rd at Harold's Cross Greyhound Stadium. For further information on this event and on the Alan Kerins African Projects, check out www.alankerins.ie