Dunboyne students present project to Ban Ki-Moon

A group of Dunboyne students who recently published 'a student response" to the global campaign to end poverty, had an opportunity to present their work to the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, when he visited Ireland last week. Students from Dunboyne collaborated with pupils of Coláiste Bhride in Carnew, Co Wicklow and the Irish development agency, Self Help Africa to produce 'Twenty Fifteen", a compendium of new Irish writing that was published last month. Taking its name from the year set by the United Nations to deliver on the promises set by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 'Twenty Fifteen" includes the thoughts and reflections of students, figures from public life, and some of Ireland"s leading literary figures, on the first millennium goal, to eradicate hunger and poverty. The book is the first in a series of collaborations that Self Help Africa"s development education unit is to embark on in conjunction with Irish schools, as a platform to allow young people to express their views on the different UN goals. Dunboyne students Trudie O"Gorman and Rebecca Farry, and their teacher Caroline Toole, joined students from Carnew in Dublin last week and presented the UN Secretary General with a signed copy of 'Twenty Fifteen". 'It has a very special moment for us all', according to teacher, Eleanor Lee, who said they were extremely privileged to be able to get their work on the Millennium Development Goals into the hands of the man who heads up the organisation that authored the objectives in the first place. She paid tribute to the students of both schools as 'an inspiring example" for the way they had engaged with development issues, and also extended her thanks to Self Help Africa, and to the Diseases of Poverty Consortium at NUI Maynooth for the support they had provided. 'Twenty Fifteen" includes new writing by Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, by Man Booker prize winner, Anne Enright, and by authors Sebastian Barry, Hugo Hamilton, Bernard McLaverty, Joseph O"Connor and others, and is on sale from local bookshops, and from the Self Help Africa web-site at www.selfhelpafrica.net Proceeds from the sale goes to the Irish charity"s development programmes in Africa.