Tearfund Ireland

This year, to mark the season of Lent, we have put together a series of six reflections based on a new book by Ruth Valerio: Saying Yes to Life*. In the book, Ruth goes through the creation story, touching on themes of light, water, land, seasons, creatures, and humankind.   

We are currently experiencing a whole new terrain. Our society is not used to such drastic changes in our everyday lives, in such devastating ways. We are secure in our livelihoods and our vulnerabilities are not often laid bare. But the recent Corona virus has taken Ireland and the entire world by storm. Within a short period of time, the virus has stripped lives, jobs, and businesses and pushed hospitals and morgues to their capacities.  Our economies and infrastructures are struggling. Life changed in an instant and, for most of us, this is something new to navigate. Our livelihoods have been challenged in an unprecedented way.       

At the heart of Tearfund is our calling to ‘remember the poor’. For Tearfund staff, it didn’t take long for us to realise that beyond the disruption of our day to day working lives in our Dublin office our overseas partners were facing a much bigger problem as Covid-19 made landfall in some of poorest countries on the planet.  Our partners are working in Ethiopia, Cambodia and Uganda and with Syrian refugees in Lebanon who are densely packed into makeshift shelters waiting for peace and the possibility to return home. These are countries with much fewer resources than Ireland to face this pandemic – for example in Uganda it is estimated that there are more Government Ministers than ICU beds.