DHR Communications

It has been a busy few weeks for the team at DHR as we prepare for Irish Aid‘s Africa Day Dublin celebrations which takes place  in the grounds of Farmleigh in Dublin’s Phoenix Park this coming Sunday, 26^th May. Yesterday, the full line-up for Africa Day Dublin was announced including an array of well-known personalities from the worlds of music, media, politics and sports.

The free event will run from 11am to 5pm, featuring a jam-packed schedule of music performances, children’s entertainment, food, dance, drumming and sports.  All are welcome to attend.

Dublin Bus will provide a free shuttle-bus service from the Heuston Bridge / Parkgate Street bus stop into the Phoenix Park. Families travelling by Luas, meanwhile, will be able to avail of the continued ‘kids go free’ offer, and there is also free car-parking available at Farmleigh.  Members of the public travelling by car are advised to note that parts of Chesterfield Ave will be closed to traffic, so alternatives routes should be used to access Farmleigh.

Main Stage – Sponsored by Lycamobile

Ireland’s foremost Afrobeat group Colours Afrobeat Foundation and rising gospel stars No Limits are the newest additions to the Main Stage at the event, which is sponsored by Lycamobile.  They join Stone&Jezreel, Gypsy Rebel Rabble, The Amazing Few and Madu for a day-long programme of soul, pop-punk, bluegrass, reggae and rap.

The Multiverse – the latest project from virtuoso Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu – will also perform.  Drawing on jazz influences to deliver spaced-out afro grooves, the group sees Niwel joined by Shane O’Donovan and Peter Erdei.  The always rousing Discovery Gospel Choir will perform the closing set.

The second stage at Africa Day Dublin – sponsored by Moneygram – will have a strong focus on urban music, featuring a host of rappers, DJs and hip-hop artists of African / Irish origin.  Those performing will include: DJ Wax, ShoBiz, Graciano Major, Funzo and DJ Me.

African Bazaar

One of the focal points of the Africa Day Dublin event will be the outdoor African Bazaar.  This will house 40 different groups, showcasing the culture and traditions of numerous African states, ranging from Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda in East Africa to the Western states of Nigeria, Guinea and Ghana, and Tanzania, Malawi and Botswana in the south.

Activities on offer will include free face-painting and henna hand-painting; traditional coffee-making ceremonies; displays of arts and crafts; and children’s treasure hunts, quizzes and games.

Some of Ireland’s leading development NGOs will be present, offering fun, interactive activities.  Visitors will have the chance to contribute a message, story or photo to an Africa Day 50^th Birthday card; measure their ‘virtual water’ footprint and find out how they can be more eco-friendly with their water use; have their family photographed as part of an international photography project; or sit in a typical African fishing boat to play a simple ‘fishing’ game.

Sports and Play Zone

The Sports and Play Zone adjacent to the African Bazaar will be officially opened at 11.30am by the world-renowned Kenyan athlete Wilfred Bungei, who won the 800-metre gold medal at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

The Football Association of Ireland will then run a fun skills zone until 2pm, where sports enthusiasts of all ages and abilities can test their dribbling, running, passing and shooting skills.

From 2pm to 5pm, traditional African games will be on offer, as well as a giant ‘snakes and ladders’ game and amusement rides for children.

Speakers’ Corner

The Speakers’ Corner will host interactive workshops over the course of the day.  The first – kicking off at 12pm – will see radio presenter, actor and stand-up comedian Dil Wickremasinghe host a discussion on ‘the changing relationship between Africa and Ireland’.

At 1.15pm, broadcaster Orla Barry will host the Africa Day Book Club discussion, focusing on the novel ‘How to Read the Air’ by Ethiopian / American author Dinaw Mengestu.  TV presenter Diana Bunici; travel writer Manchán Magan; South African children’s author Thabi Madide; and Pauline Conway, former Irish Ambassador to Ethiopia will share their views, and audience-members will also be invited to contribute.

The Minister for Trade and Development, Joe Costello TD, will be one of the panellists for a discussion on ‘Celebrating 50 Years of African Unity: Achievements of the African Union’ at 2.45pm.  Chaired by Irish Times Foreign Policy Editor Paddy Smyth, this workshop will also feature contributions from H.E. Catherine M. Mwangi, Kenyan Ambassador to Ireland and Dean of the African diplomatic corps; Salome Mbugua, Director of AkiDwA, the migrant women’s organisation; Síle Maguire, former Irish Ambassador to the African Union; and Dr. Carol Newman, Assistant Professor in Economics and a Fellow at Trinity College Dublin.

The final workshop at Africa Day will focus on active citizenship and the inclusion of members of Ireland’s African diaspora communities in politics and civic society.

‘Best Dressed’ Competition

One of the highlights of Africa Day Dublin promises to be the ‘best dressed’ competition: visitors are being encouraged to deck themselves out in their most colourful African finery before coming to the event.  Those who consider themselves in the running for a prize can enter at the ‘Best Dressed’ stall in the African Bazaar, and a parade of finalists will take place through the grounds of Farmleigh before the winners are announced at 4.15pm.

Other elements of Africa Day Dublin will include:

• An indoor Kids’ Zone with free storytelling sessions; music and dance; face-painting; and art activities.
• A ‘Bang the Drum with Irish Aid’ tent, where visitors can participate in an African drumming circle

Africa Day events in Ireland are supported by Irish Aid at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.  Further information is available at www.africaday.ie. The full schedule is available below

A new book telling the story of DHR Account Director Tony Heffernan’s four-decade career in left-wing politics is available to purchase directly from DHR Communcations.

The book, “Tony Heffernan: From Merrion Square to Merrion Street” by Brian Kenny provides an honest and humorous insight into left wing politics in Ireland from one of its most influential behind the scenes organisers. The books takes its title from Tony’s presence at the burning of the British Embassy in Merrion Square in January 1972 as part of the reaction to the events of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Derry in which 13 unarmed civil rights marchers were killed and his subsequent career in Government Buildings, on Merrion Street, as a senior official.

The book is priced at €8 plus postage. Please email Ciara@dhr.ie for more information.

Dublin City Council has designated this Friday, 8th March as Digital Dublin Day. A series of events aimed at showing Dubliners how technology can positively impact their lives will be happening throughout the capital.

Digital Dublin Day will have it’s basecamp at The Mansion House, Dawson Street with activities including electric cars onsite and available for test drive, the creation of digital stories and a digital treasure trail via StoryMap,  learning to code with CoderDojo involving groups of local schoolchildren and a video project by Techspace who will edit and display video interviews with citizens recorded on the day.

Closer to home in Dublin 8, The Digital Hub are hosting a free workshop on Skype to celebrate Digital Dublin Day next Friday. The workshop will provide hands-on, practical information on everything you need to know to use Skype. Instructors will walk you through setting up Skype on your computer, adding contacts and making calls.  Bring along the contact information for your loved ones abroad, and you can Skype them live from the workshop for the very first time!

Event Details:

Date: Friday, 8^th March 2013

Time: 1pm to 2pm OR 3pm to 4pm

Venue: The workshop takes place in the Learning Studio, Digital Exchange, Crane Street, The Digital Hub, Dublin 8 (directions and map available here).

Price: Free

Admission to the workshop is free of charge, but you must register to attend in advance.  To register, contact Louise Morgan in The Digital Hub, Tel: 01-4806200, Email: lmorgan@thedigitalhub.com.

A new book telling the story of DHR Account Director Tony Heffernan’s four-decade career in left-wing politics will be launched this evening (26.02.2013) in Dublin. Pat Rabbitte TD, Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources will be the guest speaker at the launch.

The book, “Tony Heffernan: From Merrion Square to Merrion Street” by Brian Kenny provides an honest and humorous insight into left wing politics in Ireland from one of its most influential behind the scenes organisers. The books takes its title from Tony’s presence at the burning of the British Embassy in Merrion Square in January 1972 as part of the reaction to the events of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Derry in which 13 unarmed civil rights marchers were killed and his subsequent career in Government Buildings, on Merrion Street, as a senior official.

Immediately prior to joining DHR Communications’ team, Tony served as Media Director for Michael D. Higgins’ successful presidential election campaign.  Previously, he worked for 29 years in the Oireachtas, holding a number of positions over that time including Press and Parliamentary Director for the Labour Party and Assistant Government Press Secretary (as the nominee of Democratic Left) with the Rainbow Government between 1994 and 1997.

‘Tony Heffernan: from Merrion Square to Merrion Street’ by Brian Kenny is published privately and available at Books Upstairs, Dublin, or from kennyb@eircom.net, price €8 plus postage.

Gaumina – our neighbours in Dublin 8 (they’re based in The Digital Hub) – have established a new blog, aimed at showcasing “experts who work in marketing that use digital”.  The first guest post on their blog is by our very own Martina Quinn, Account Director with DHR Communications. 

In the blog, Martina writes about our work last year on an awareness-raising campaign for the LGBT Helpline, and how the use of digital tools contributed to the success of the campaign.  You can read the blog entry here.

Gaumina is a full-service digital agency, connecting clients with online and mobile audiences.  You can find out more about their work here.

DHR Account Director Martina Quinn participated in EIL’s corporate volunteering programme during October 2012, spending four weeks in Nepal.  In this, the third in a series of blogs about her experiences, she describes her work teaching school-children in Kathmandu.

Shree Baal Byabashyee – the school I worked at in Nepal – is different to most Irish schools.  When you walk through the front door, you enter a large open-air courtyard.  The classrooms and corridors are located around the four sides of this yard, with stone steps leading up to the first and second floors. 

Facilities are basic.  The desks are of the old-fashioned wooden kind; the walls and floors are bare cement; the children’s uniforms are tattered and torn; and there isn’t a wall-chart, a bright poster or an interactive whiteboard in sight. 

The school is run by the Nepalese Government, and caters for children aged approximately five to 16.  Class sizes seem smaller than in Ireland: there were only about 12 children in the class I taught, and glimpses of other classrooms gave me the impression that this is the norm. 

For my work at Shree Baal Byabashyee, I was mostly paired with another volunteer, Danielle (also from Ireland), and the two of us spent about 90 minutes each morning teaching Maths and English to a class of seven-year-olds. 

Some of the children I taught at Shree Baal Byabashyee

I found my first few classes surprisingly daunting: being the centre of attention for a dozen seven-year-olds; all eyes following me eagerly, challenging me to keep them entertained…  I soon realised the key was to come well prepared, so I focused on planning lessons in advance and making sure I had enough material at hand to keep the class interested at all times. 

One of the things the kids liked most was to be called to the front of the class to write on the board (there was intense competition to be granted this honour), so I built exercises incorporating this activity into each of my lesson plans.  The children also loved receiving high fives for work they’d done, and had a particularly enthusiastic reaction to me writing in their copy-books.  If I gave one child a tick for work completed correctly, the next child would want two ticks and the next after that three.  If I wrote ‘very good’ after a student’s work on one occasion, I had to write it from then on every single time…

In Nepal, high importance is placed on learning English, and Nepalese people of all ages are eager to improve their English to enhance their job prospects.  Our class of seven-year-olds was no different: they had all been studying English for a couple of years.  They greeted us each morning with a song in English (‘Say good morning, say good morning.  How are you?’) and ended each class with a similar refrain (‘Say goodbye now, say goodbye now.  See you soon…’).  Even more impressive, they were well able to learn Maths through English – doing exercises and grasping concepts at a similar level to what seven-year-olds here would do, but all through the medium of a foreign language. 

Unfortunately, my teaching stint at Shree Baal Byabashyee lasted only 10 days: after that, the school closed for holidays to mark the Dasain festival, so my volunteering schedule had to change. 

Shree Baal Byabashyee school building.  The giant bamboo swing in the foreground was erected as part of the celebrations to mark the Dasain festival.  For the festival, huge swings like this are erected temporarily in villages and cities all over Nepal.

One of the highlights of my time at the school was the concert held on the final day before the holidays: it began at 7am and lasted until lunchtime, and was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

For the event, three or four classrooms were joined together to make one very long, very narrow room, into which every single student was packed, along with teachers and special guests.  All of the volunteers who taught at the school were invited along, and were seated in prominent positions in the front rows with other guests.  While we remained steadfastly attentive (if somewhat bemused) throughout the event, some of the others in our midst chattered loudly, snoozed, took phonecalls, or read the newspaper, rustling the pages noisily and jostling people with their elbows left and right. 

There were rows of seats at the front of the room but, the further back you went, the more chaotic it became.  About halfway back, the seating stopped and the children stood jampacked, crowded together in a frenzy of excitement, behaving as though they were at a sell-out show by an international pop-star, rather than a school concert with performances by their peers.  At the very back, some of the older kids stood on desks and clambered to get high up on the window-sills and walls, whistling and screaming at the performers and noisily singing along.

Some of the enthusiastic audience at the school concert

A raised stone platform at the top of the room – the spot from which the teacher usually led his or her class – served as the stage.  Various performers trooped on and off over the course of the morning, ranging from complex traditional dance acts – complete with beautiful ethnic costumes – to more contemporary hip-hop.  The performers who sang well-known Bollywood songs were a particular hit: the watching students went wild, swooning and singing back at them, and greeting them with rapturous applause.  One particularly memorable performance was delivered by a teenage breakdancer, obviously one of the more popular boys in the school! 

Every so often, the performances were interrupted for speeches by some of the special guests.  To my horror, I was called upon to speak on behalf of the volunteers.  Having approximately four words of Nepali and speaking to a noisy, distracted audience far more interested in where the next Bollywood song was coming from than in what I had to say meant I was one of the less popular acts of the day!

The concert finished with a raucous ensemble performance, led by the two teenage MCs, one of whom accompanied the singing on a traditional Nepalese drum.  The finale lasted at least 30 minutes, with the performers embarking on a procession around the room and back up to the stage, and various students joining in in an impromptu way. 

As well as inviting us to this unforgettable event, Shree Baal Byabashyee honoured our contribution as volunteers by performing a tika ritual for us on our last day.  Tikas – red dots in the centre of the forehead – are commonly worn by people in Nepal.  They are a symbol of blessing from the gods, and can range from discreet circular bindis to large smears of a mixture made from rice and red paste across a person’s forehead.  Being marked with tika by a Nepalese person can denote their hospitality, gratitude or blessing.  Tikas can also signify the marital status of the wearer, and are applied in complex patterns for different religious ceremonies. 

I was given tika on a dozen occasions during my time in Nepal, usually accompanied by the placing of a cream-coloured scarf around my neck.  When a number of people are present for the giving of tika, each person must take a turn, so the recipient can end up with a lot of red paste daubed across their forehead and multiple scarves around their neck, something that happened to me a number of times. 

My fellow volunteer Danielle (on the left) and I, pictured with some of our students after our tika ritual with the staff of the school.

The concert and tika ritual marked the end of my work at Shree Baal Byabashyee, but my 10 days there gave me a brief insight into the education system in Nepal and brought home to me how privileged we are in Ireland to have good public schools. 

Here, we take it for granted that every child can receive a free State education, and our enrolment levels for primary school are at 100 per cent.  In Nepal, a system of public education exists – and many initiatives have been introduced to improve educational attainment levels – but relatively high proportions of children still never attend school.  According to a 2012 report, only 78 per cent of school-age boys, and an even lower 64 per cent of school-age girls, were enrolled in Nepalese primary schools over the past 10 years.

The number of schools in Nepal has increased exponentially in recent decades, often with international development assistance.  But a lot of this progress has been neutralised by rising population levels and political instability.  The burgeoning population means there continues to be a shortage of facilities, and the 10-year civil war – which lasted from 1996 to 2006 – severely disrupted schooling for an entire generation of rural children.

Huge challenges still exist in ensuring all Nepalese children receive an adequate education.  Ongoing political instability does not help the situation.  The enthusiasm of the children I met at Shree Baal Byabashyee, however, and the obvious dedication of the teachers, does inspire hope.

DHR Communications would like to wish all of those with whom we work a very Happy Christmas and a great 2013. 

Thank you all for your support and custom over the past 12 months – it was very much appreciated.

We had a busy and rewarding year, working on lots of exciting projects with a wide range of clients.  We’re hoping for more of the same in 2013!

Holiday Arrangements

The DHR office is closed from Friday, 21st December 2012, until Wednesday, 2nd January 2013.  If you need to contact us urgently during that time, you can telephone 087-2309835. 

Happy Christmas!

DHR Communications recently sponsored our Account Director Martina Quinn to participate in EIL’s corporate volunteering programme.  During October 2012, she spent four weeks in Kathmandu, Nepal.  In this, the second in a series of blogs about her experiences, she recalls her first few days in Nepal and how she quickly settled in to life as a volunteer. 

Four Weeks in Nepal – Part 2: Life as a Volunteer

Martina with some of her fellow volunteers and staff from the volunteer house during a day-trip to see the tallest Shiva statute in the world, at Sanga in the Kathmandu Valley.

Fridays and Saturdays are the weekend in Nepal.  I arrived in Kathmandu on a Friday, so I had a couple of days to get my bearings before my volunteer placement began.

First up was an exploration of my new home.  Throughout my placement, I stayed in a volunteer house in Mahankal, a residential area in northern Kathmandu, about 30 minutes’ drive from the well-known central tourist district of Thamel.

The house can be home to as many as 30 international volunteers at any given time.  Summer is the busiest period, so when I was there (in October), it was relatively quiet.  For my first week, there were 10 volunteers in total; there were six for my second; and our number had dwindled to four by the time I left.  As well as a couple of other Irish, I was living with French, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian and American volunteers, and the house had some Indian staff-members as well as some Nepalese, so we had a nice international mix.

The volunteer house itself was the first of many pleasant surprises I had during my time in Nepal.  It is a beautifully-kept, modern, spacious three-storey building, with balconies on every floor and a sun-terrace on the roof.  Down in the basement, there are a dining-room and the kitchen – the well-guarded preserve of Kedar, the very friendly but somewhat territorial cook!

On the ground floor, there is a large recreation room – complete with Wi-Fi – where volunteers do work planning, and watch TV and relax at night.  There is also an office with two computers for volunteers’ use, and numerous noticeboards with information about weekly schedules.

The bedrooms are on the upper floors.  Each room accommodates up to six volunteers, all sleeping in bunks and with steel shelving units for your clothes.  Because it was quiet when I was there, I shared my room with just one other girl.

There are bathrooms on every floor, complete with strong showers with an almost constant supply of hot water, thanks to solar panels on the roof.  And volunteers get three meals a day, diligently prepared by Kedar.

So, all in all, I was living in relative luxury.  Very occasionally, the hot water ran out.  There were power-cuts every day and night (this happens throughout Nepal because of electricity shortages).  And there were no laundry facilities in the house, so I had to wash my clothes by hand.  But I certainly wasn’t roughing it in the way that I had expected to be.

The neighbourhood I was living in would be considered middle-class by Nepalese standards.  It has lots of houses similar to the volunteer house, but in which large extended families or maybe a number of different families live.  There are quirky little corner-shops scattered about, selling everything from beer to beads to toiletries and toys.

The roads – as was the case in every single place I visited in Nepal – are in dire straits.  Little more than mud-tracks, they are scarred with potholes and choked with debris; covered in roughly broken stones, constantly displaced by streams of water from nearby homes.

Piles of rubbish – unfortunately, a ubiquitous sight in Kathmandu – are heaped along the roads and in the overgrown grassed areas in between housing lots.  Occasionally, these are set alight and the air is filled with acrid fumes.

Hens and dogs wander the streets.  Most Nepalese are admirably self-sufficient when it comes to producing food and the preponderance of hens is proof of this.  The majority of houses near ours kept a few, and I soon got used to the sound of roosters crowing throughout the night.

The dogs in our neighbourhood were night-time creatures too.  By day, they were a sight to behold: absolutely dead to the world asleep in any patch of shade they could find.  By night, they competed with the roosters in an inharmonious cacophony of barks and cock-a-doodle-doos.

The neighbourhood kids made a more pleasant type of noise.  Their smiles and voices and curious stares greeted me every evening when I returned home from work, and followed me every morning as I left the house – a chorus of ‘Hello’ and ‘What is your name?’ and ‘How are you?’ ringing in my ears, as I went on my way.

After a couple of days’ settling in and exploring, I visited a number of volunteer projects to see where I would be working for the next few weeks.  In consultation with local staff – and depending, to some extent, on where my help was needed most – I then chose which projects I wanted to work on, and my daily schedule ended up like this:

• 6am-7am: an hour of yoga to kick-start the day (an optional activity on offer at the volunteer house).
• 8am-9am: teaching a pre-school class at a child protection home in Siphal, an area about 30 minutes’ walk from our house.
• 10am-11am: work-planning back at the house.
• 11.30am-12.30pm: teaching a class of seven-year-olds at Shree Baal Byabashyee, a government school.
• 1pm-3pm: lunch back at the volunteer house, followed by another stint of work-planning.
• 3.30pm-4.30pm: teaching English to a women’s group, as part of a community-based women’s empowerment project.
• 4.30pm-6.00pm: back to the children’s home for evening activities with all of the children there.

Ten days into my stay in Kathmandu, Dasain – the biggest annual Hindu festival in Nepal – began.  The festival lasts for 15 days and celebrates the victory of the goddess Durga over the forces of evil.  Animals are sacrificed; giant bamboo swings are erected in every village; and thousands of Nepalese leave the city to return home to rural areas to celebrate with their families.

The rituals around the festival are fascinating.  And there was a great atmosphere in Kathmandu throughout Dasain.  But it had practical implications for my volunteering work: basically, most public and educational services shut down.  So the school where I worked and the women’s English class I taught closed for a two-week holiday.  As a result, in addition to spending a few hours each day at the children’s home, I began working at the Briddhashram Social Welfare Centre, a home for destitute older people.

DHR Communications recently sponsored our Account Director Martina Quinn to participate in EIL’s corporate volunteering programme.  During October 2012, she spent four weeks in Kathmandu, Nepal.  In this, the first in a series of blogs about her experiences, she recounts her overall impressions of Nepal.

DHR Account Director Martina Quinn in Nepal

I fell in love last month.  Not with a person – but with a people, and a place, and the feeling I could experience a hundred new things in any given day.

I’ve worked with DHR Communications for nearly six years now.  During that time, I’ve worked on PR campaigns for community and voluntary organisations, national charities and various development NGOs.  I’ve immersed myself in issues such as human rights, community development, global poverty and interculturalism.  And I’ve worked on lots of projects with a focus on international development.  But – until this October – I had no experience of working in a developing country.

During October, I spent four weeks in Nepal.  I was there as a participant in EIL’s corporate volunteering programme, and spent most of my time in the capital city, Kathmandu.

Nepal is one of the world’s 10 poorest countries.  It has the highest income disparity in Asia and one of the lowest levels of spending on health.  Out of a total population of about 30 million, seven million Nepalese lack adequate food or basic healthcare and education.

The adult literacy rate in Nepal is only 49 per cent.  The average yearly income is less than €200 per person.  And, in the very recent past, the country suffered hugely because of political upheaval and civil war: a decade-long Maoist insurgency only ended in 2006.  Two years later, the Nepalese parliament voted to abolish the monarchy, ending 240 years of royal rule.

I knew none of these facts before deciding to volunteer with EIL.  I knew Nepal was home to Mount Everest, that it was a relatively poor country and that it had experienced some political unrest.  And I had a vague sense that it had an interesting mix of cultures, religions and ethnic groups.  But I only really began to research the country a couple of months before my trip.

Of course, facts and figures on a website or printed page cannot prepare you for what a place is really like.  There is a specific soundtrack to Kathmandu that is difficult to describe in print.  It consists of barking dogs and crowing roosters by night; blaring horns, jumbled shouts and children at play by day; and then, occasionally, moments of blissful peace – when you stumble across a courtyard surreal in its tranquillity in the midst of the city’s clamour, or you venture into the hills high above Kathmandu…

Vibrant colours assault your eyes as you go about your daily business.  The sky is a brilliant blue; the distant snow-capped mountains sparkle in the sun.  On the market stalls, there’s a dazzling array of multicoloured spices and beads.  Bright red tika dots the foreheads of passersby.  Weather-beaten prayer-flags flutter in the breeze.  Outside the many temples, garlands of orange marigolds are on sale.

The Nepalese people have certain traits that are also difficult to describe.  In a society steeped in concepts of status and caste, they are deferential and formal but – at the same time – open, friendly, affectionate and fun.

Most of the people I met were completely without guile; genuinely willing to help in a way I found almost disconcerting at first.  In Ireland and abroad, I’m used to arming myself with a certain amount of scepticism: if random strangers offer me help, automatically I question their motives.  But on my second day in Nepal – when a young student who overhead me asking for directions walked 30 minutes out of his way to make sure I got on the right bus home – my usual scepticism began to dissolve.

The longer I stayed, the more I appreciated the hospitality and helpfulness of the Nepalese people.  I was welcomed into strangers’ homes, given gifts by people I barely knew, and treated at all times with great kindness and respect.

Of course, all of these impressions were built up over a period of four weeks.  The night I arrived in Nepal, I had been travelling for nearly 24 hours and was more focused on getting to sleep than observing my new surroundings.  At that stage, I didn’t really know what lay ahead – where I would be working; who I would be working with; whether or not I’d like Nepal.  Over the next few weeks, I had plenty of time to find out.

DHR Managing Director, Catherine Heaney spent a week in the North Ethiopian heritage town Lalibela this month as part of her voluntary involvement in the Irish business-to-business charity, Connect Ethiopia. Connect Ethiopia aims to help improve hotel, catering and entertainment offerings at the much visited city. The charity was founded in 2005 by leading entrepreneur Brody Sweeney and well-known solicitor Philip Lee.

Catherine travelled with a 13 strong voluntary delegation of leading figures from Ireland’s hospitality, marketing and craft sectors to Lalibela at the beginning of November. The delegation included Michelin star chef Kevin Thornton (of Thornton’s), Francis Brennan, Kenmare Park Hotel manager and TV presenter of At Your Service; and entrepreneur Brody Sweeney. All of the Irish people involved in the trip gave freely of their skills and services.

Catherine with some of the younger residents of Lalibela during her recent trip to Ethiopia.

Lalibela is famed for its 11th and 12th Century rock-hewn churches and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  During the delegations’ time in Lalibela, they delivered an intensive training programme to 80 local service-providers and worked to build the ‘StayLalibela’ brand, which aims to increase the number of tourists visiting the village each year.

The purpose of the trip was to enhance the skills of key personnel in Lalibela’s hospitality sector, so that the village can take advantage of a growing tourism market in Ethiopia and develop sustainable tourism products.. The Irish delegation developed a range of new tourism products, including a cookery school, a half-day farm visit and a walking tour.  Catherine worked closely with the Lalibela Hotel Association during her stay, providing advice on writing website content and marketing their services better.

“While Lalibela plays host to lots of day-trippers who come to visit the churches, what we are aiming to do is ensure people extend their visit and remain in the village for a longer period of time,” Catherine says.  “Our aim is not only to encourage more people to visit Lalibela, but also to increase the average number of nights that tourists spend there from one to three.

“Thanks to our work in November, visitors to Lalibela can now enjoy a range of activities as well as visiting the spectacular churches.  With StayLalibela, we hope to create a more sustainable and profitable tourism industry in Lalibela, which will be of real benefit to the local economy.  Our measurable objective will be to help double the number of foreign visitors to Lalibela from 28,000 in 2009 to 56,000 in three years’ time.”

You can keep up-to-date on the progress of StayLalibela by checking out the website on a regular basis and / or following StayLalibela on Facebook.