40th Lenten campaign launch

As we launch our 40th anniversary Lenten campaign today, we thank the people of Ireland for four decades of life-changing support.

This year’s Lenten campaign was launched by children from Northampton National School, Kinvara, Co Galway, who won a national competition to have their design featured on the 40th anniversary Trócaire box. Trócaire boxes, which will be in houses nationwide over the next six weeks of Lent, show the winning design, featuring people across the world pulling together to build a better future.

Caption: Top: Nine year old twins Niamh and Caoimhe Fahy of Northhampton National School, Kinvara, Co Galway. The school won a national competition to design the Trócaire box for the 40th annual Lenten campaign; the winning design is shown among its predecessors. Bottom: The Northhampton National School’s winning design.

This year’s Lenten Campaign highlights how rural communities in India are working together to successfully petition their government to provide for their human rights to education, water, healthcare and basic infrastructure. “They are asking their government to share the country’s new-found wealth and through this address inequality,” says Justin Kilcullen, our Executive Director. “They are speaking up and demanding justice. And for the first time, they are being listened to.”  

This years box also features Ambika Paraja (9) from India and highlights how communities there are helped through Irish donations. Ambika is from a tribal village called Jhilligoan in Odisha state, eastern India. Trócaire, working through local community organisations, has helped Jhilligoan’s people to advocate for their rights and work with the local government to improve their village. The community now has clean water, a road, a basic school, a local health worker and is farming more successfully. Their future, particularly their children’s future, is now much more secure.

Trócaire’s Lenten campaign runs from Ash Wednesday 13th February to Easter Sunday 31st March 2013. To order a Trócaire Box or find out more, visit a local parish, go to our Lent page, or call 1850 408 408.