Roos Demol, a magical, influential lady. Though I don't know much about Roos because of my disconnect with the social group that has been formed due to the philanthropic and human-loving efforts of Roos Demol in Kinsale Accommodation Centre. But I would love to tell everybody what amazing is the little that I know about her.
The tireless efforts of a lady who is in her fifties, whose age may have been able to affect her body but not her rock-solid ambitions of helping the needy. The little I know about this lady is that she is not an Irish but natively a Belgian yet resident in Ireland for some time now.
When she started visiting our centre initially, I considered her as one of those NGO people who visit our Accommodation for the sake of formality.
You know it's a brilliant idea to pay visits to any asylum seekers hostel and distribute a few brochures, with the useless information about their rights so that the NGO could mark an activity in their profile and legitimise the funds they received or would receive from their donors.
This happened a couple of times with me since I came here, for example, there was a group of ladies who came to our centre with the idea of Dance Therapy, but in fact, that was a kindergarten class activity like telling children's stories, acting weirdly using small children's props but I suppose they got funded for wasting adult's time. Only I and my friend signed up for the class and suffered badly two times when we dared to attend their class. It was conducted in our kitchen hall and was really embarrassing to be behaving like children and watching people passing smiles at us.
Another time when Noman, my friend, and I got some brochures, distributed by some social body's people for free First Aid training and other similar small trainings, we decided to give it a go.
We called at the given numbers on the brochure, initially they told us that we called very early for the training classes, later they said, the courses we were looking for were being taught in the other campus, when we called, "The Other Campus", where the main person we were supposed to talk to, was away. But they were very efficient. As soon as we called, they immediately noted our names and numbers with the promises of calling us back. But obviously, we never heard from them again.
Some NGO's (not all), set up offices and hire staff, just to present a picture to the donor groups, persons or companies, that they are really established NGOs and seriously involved in the business of social work, whereas they are not, its all artificial set up just to get funds for their made up projects/schemes.
Anyhow, coming back to our own Magical Lady, Roos Demol, when she initially came here, she met me as if she knew me for years, with a broad smile on her face and tender tone on her lips. I really thought she was just like any other NGO person.
She actually offered me to join a music class which was being set up just because of the efforts of Roos Demol, which I did. She brought Guitars for every student of the music class, I also got one, I could not continue the class for long due to the wide span of my activities, I was busy on many fronts at that time, with Fine Gael for my interest in Political activities, with my other educational endeavours which I was trying to start at that time whether it be in Law which was my area of studies or in Web Development which was my area of interest.
She arranged the Music teacher, she talked to our management for providing a separate room for the music class.
All of this done with the pure intention of empathy, selflessness and no expectations. I did not see this going far at that time.
But the iron lady she is she kept coming back, though she was struggling for a place to stay at that time but this struggle did not in any way hamper her philanthropic efforts for the residents of Kinsale Accommodation.
On every visit to accommodation, she brings bags full of clothes for men, women and children, other than that if anyone is in need of anything, he or she can ask Roos without any hesitation and she would launch a campaign with her circles for the provision of the same thing.
She is not shy in asking for charity stuff, for the asylum seekers.
Specifically, for this reason, I have given her the title of Secret Santa. It's not me only who view her this way but there are others from Kinsale Accommodation as well who view Roos with the same perspective as mine as Debora Oniah says,
"To me Roos, she is everyday Santa since Santa only come for Christmas"as Ramata Salim says,
"She is one in million."as Melanie Marks calls her,
"Woman of strength, Roos, well done."and Joyce Luceba shows her love as,
"Wow! awesome Roos, she is a sunshine in winter season for asylum seekers and mankind. Power to her"
People just love her. At the moment Roos has actually developed a team for herself, she started her work from scratch, but now she has a team of trained musicians who have already conducted a successful fundraising musical programme and it was unbelievable to see that every participant in the musical show was an asylum seeker. She invited the civil society, other NGO's and her friends to attend the Musical Fundraiser Programme. I attended the event and was mesmerised by the performances of the artists, who all were asylum seekers from my own accommodation centre.
She came with nothing but she built an army for herself. She raised good funds that day and as of now, I suppose she would be in Limerick for another fundraiser programme of the same nature for MASI (Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland).
People of her age usually only struggle with the health issues but her age is shying away by her firm determinations to work for the deprived class. This is really commendable.
I really got impressed so I thought to pay a little tribute to her in my blog. Indeed, she is an example for many in Ireland, who don't want to work but blame the asylum seekers for taking up their jobs, whereas asylum seekers were not even allowed to work previously.
I salute to the efforts of Our Secret Santa, our own Roos Demol and I wish her the very best of luck.
0 comments:
Post a Comment