A FORMER child bride, a professional rugby player turned solicitor, an out of work marketing executive and a fashion show producer have taken on a new Apprentice-style challenge.
They are winners of the Vodafone World of Difference programme and will each spend a year working with the charity of their choice, with their salaries, approximately €40,000, paid by the phone company.
After 372 applications were whittled down by phone interviews and presentations to six, three winners were picked and the fourth, Benedicta Attoh, who lives in Co Louth, won a public vote on social website Facebook.
A child bride at 15 in Nigeria, when she was forced to marry a man “old enough to be my father”, Ms Attoh spoke of her experiences and used that to work with Plan Ireland, part of Plan International, which focuses on children in the world’s poorest countries.
Involved with them on a voluntary basis for four years, she will work as an advocacy and education officer. She is an ambassador for its “Because I am a Girl” project, where girls in the poorest countries “are not allow to go to school, are forced into prostitution and early marriage” and suffer genital mutilation.
She highlights the gender inequality in Ireland, just 13 per cent of women in the Dáil and 17 per cent elected to local authorities. “My story was very emotive,” she says and will use her experience to encourage girls in Ireland that “they can be whoever they aspire to be. They often say they never got opportunities, but I want to help them appreciate the opportunities they have if they see the experience of girls in the world’s poorest countries.”
Mark O’Doherty is almost a year out of work as a marketing executive. He used a quirky method to find his charity. “Because I was struggling to find a suitable charity I put up a post on Facebook,” he says. He was contacted the next day by singer Frances Black, who set up RISE (Rehabilitation in a Safe Environment) for addicts’ families.
“If you had asked me last year, I would have said there is no way I could survive on €40,000 but when you’ve lived on the dole, you find you can get by on very little.”
He will be marketing and communications director for the two-year-old charity to raise awareness. “There’s a lot of emphasis on the addicts but not on their families who are often going through hell,” he said.
Former rugby player Patrick Haslett, who played professionally for Edinburgh until 1997 when he had a serious neck injury, is an in-house solicitor for Vodafone. and currently coaches under-20s in Clontarf.
He will work as a fundraiser for the Paralympic Council of Ireland as it prepares for the 2012 Paralympics. “It’s a tremendous opportunity to give to the community,” he says of his new role.
Mark Smith works on a seasonal basis as a fashion show producer.With a background in graphic design he will work as a projects art officer at Navan Resource Centre, a Rehab centre.
“We don’t have to wait for every four years until the Special Olympics are on for the public to get involved,” he says.
