Over the last 80 years, your support and contributions from Ireland have had profound effects on the lives of marginalised and poor across the developing world.
Our Jesuit Province in Ireland sent over 2,000 Irish Jesuits abroad on mission – some on short missions of less than a year – others committing to a lifetime of mission, choosing to be buried with the people they served. For many, their mission country became their home.
In 1945 the Irish Province set up a Mission Office to support these men on mission and provide a means for their families and friends at home in Ireland to stay in touch – at a time when mobile phones, emails and even postal services weren’t operating.
IJI’s first fundraising appeal advert appeared in 1959 in the Clongownian, an annual journal of Clongowes Wood College, depicting this mother and daughter in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia)
This office evolved over time, expanding to generate funds for development and relief aid to Jesuit projects overseas, and sending lay professional partners – to meet the gap in skillsets which mission countries were facing.
Lay professional partners in mission and sister congregations made, and today still make, the work of our Irish Jesuits possible, for which we are immensely grateful.
We were one of the earlier charities to register in Ireland, as were many of the congregations, before the charity sector grew as we know it today.
Ireland’s official aid programme was established in 1974, and it stood on the foundations missionaries built through their pioneering service in education, medical services, social services, agriculture and ecology.
In the last 20 years, with your support and that of Irish Aid and Misean Cara, we have issued 700 grants worth €19 million in aid to 29 countries in the global south.
Keeping administrations costs low, we reach places where many other NGOs cannot reach when restricted by security protocols.
Our Jesuit projects overseas continue throughout conflicts, throughout wars, accompanying people at their most vulnerable.
With your support, we have the privilege to be able to serve in humanitarian crises such as in Tigray in Ethiopia which is one of the forgotten conflicts which never get headlines in the West.
We have indeed touched the lives of the most forgotten and those left behind.
Contrary to our reality in Ireland, many of the countries we support like South Sudan, still rely heavily on religious congregations to run vital services.
13,545 Jesuits are within the Society of Jesus across the globe; 85 are Irish, with 6 of those Irish Jesuits overseas on mission.
The scale of the work we contribute to, from IJI alone, directly reaches almost 150,000 people each year in developing countries. Our work is as crucial now, as it ever has been from our onset 80 years ago.
The response of the Irish public to our brother Tony O’Riordan SJ in Syria during the earthquake is testimony to people in Ireland seeking in to respond to where the need is greatest.
We continue as men and women for and with others to be in solidarity with people who desire and hope for a better future. #WorldCharityDay
Cover photo: Children in Kasungu, Malawi plant trees distributed by our partners JCED.