GOAL Achievements

Since its inception in 1977, GOAL has responded to almost every major natural and man-made disaster and has spent over €500 million on humanitarian programmes worldwide.

• 2008 - GOAL responds to emergencies in Burma and Ethiopia.

• 2007 - 30th anniversary of GOAL.

• 2007 - GOAL successfully completed an intensive and extensive 30 month programme in Sri Lanka of relief, rehabilitation and development work, culminating in the construction of 63 schools which will ensure the continued education of approximately 30,000 children.

• 2006 - GOAL had its first GOALie reunion in Dublin and it was an outstanding success with several hundred GOALies from down the years attending.

• GOAL responded to the African food crisis in March 2006 where a combination of prolonged drought, the death of livestock, failing crops and conflict significantly contributed to soaring malnutrition rates in several countries, where across the African continent as many as 20 million people are threatened with starvation.

• GOAL was invited to meet with President George Bush at the White House on November 10, 2005, to discuss the emergency in earthquake-ravaged Kashmir, Pakistan. GOAL’s senior staff member Jonathan Edgar, represented the agency at the meeting, which was also attended by two other international humanitarian agencies.

• The Pakistan earthquake on October 8th 2005 left 3 million people homeless, and claimed the lives of over 90,000 people. GOAL immediately mobilised a team to bring essential supplies to communities in both Pakistani and Indian-administered Kashmir. Based in the district of Bagh, located north of the capital city Islamabad, and one of the worst affected areas where over 95% of homes have been destroyed, GOAL provides 100,000 people - representing 13,500 families - with essential emergency
supplies.

• In July 2005, GOAL was one of the first agencies to distribute much-needed emergency food supplies to the most vulnerable in Niger, the second poorest country in the world, where one in four children under the age of five die every year from chronic poverty. GOAL provided family food rations to more than 220,000 people and continues to implement a specialised feeding programme for over 8,000 severely malnourished children under the age of 5 in Zinder province, in the east of the country. Over 300 pumps and 18 wells have been repaired to provide clean and portable water to over 300,000 people, and several primary schools were repaired.

• GOAL CEO, John O’Shea addresses the Irish soccer team prior to the Portugal match. The team donated match fees for the game to GOAL.

• November 2004 saw well-known sports commentator, Michael O’Muicheartaigh, and RTE’s Mary Kennedy visit GOAL’s street children projects in Calcutta.

• In response to the Tsunami on December 26th 2004, which devastated South East Asia, GOAL immediately mobilised emergency teams in India, Sri Lanka, the Andaman Islands and Indonesia. In Sri Lanka, GOAL provided assistance to approximately 180,000 tsunami victims. Our emergency operations included the distribution of food, rubble removal, waste management disposal, distribution of food and non-food items, community kitchens, building temporary shelters for 1,400 families, medical and counseling services, distributing mosquito nets, family hygiene kits, replacement of boats and nets and the re-building of boatyards.

• GOAL Ethiopia hosted visits from USAID Deputy Director, Andrew Natsios in February, Bob Geldof in May and the UN special Envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, in June 2003. U2’s front man Bono also visited GOAL projects in Ethiopia the same year.

• The same year also saw the opening of the Noel Carroll Building in Calcutta – a-state-of-the-art training centre for mother and child health workers dedicated to Noel Carroll, former GOAL chairperson and international athlete.

• In 2003, GOAL was approved for funding which totals over €33 million paid over three years by DCI (Development Cooperation Ireland) – the arm of the Government responsible for distributing development aid.

• In late 2003, as the emergency situation began to unfold in Darfur, Sudan, GOAL was one of the first agencies to respond to the needs of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people. GOAL has since been implementing life-saving primary health care programmes, food and nutrition-supplementary feeding programmes, as well as non-food distribution in the region.

• GOAL’s advocacy work finally paid real dividends in 2003 when the Irish Government were persuaded to divert €10 million from the government of Uganda, to a poverty alleviation fund run by civil societies and NGOs.

• The eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo in January 2002 saw more devastation in a country already scarred by years of conflict. GOAL responded immediately deploying personnel in Goma to distribute survival kits, before initiating a reconstruction programme.

• In 2001, within hours of Hurricane Michelle devastating El Salvador, GOAL had begun distributing emergency food and non-food supplies, before promptly embarking on rehabilitation programmes.

• Later that year, GOAL mounted its largest aid effort to date, bringing food and shelter supplies to hundreds of thousands of people affected by war and drought in northern Afghanistan.

• GOAL immediately flew 40 tonnes of emergency relief aid to Mozambique after flooding devastated the Gaza and Maputo regions in March 2000. Displaced people were given shelter in camps and food, and non-food items were distributed. GOAL also embarked on reconstructing schools damaged in the emergency.

• GOAL was one of the first NGOs to react to the humanitarian crisis in East Timor in 1999, when the brutality of the occupying Indonesian army led to the slaughter of 200,000 civilians and saw two-thirds of the population forced to flee their homes. GOAL provided emergency aid and personnel to the capital Dili in 1999.

• In 1999, GOAL was one of the first agencies to distribute aid and relief items in the Kukes area of Northern Albania. United Nation’s General Secretary Kofi Annan performed the official opening of three schools renovated by GOAL in Peje.

• In the same year GOAL began war damage repair work in Bosnia – Herzegovina and assisted in the repatriation of two million refugees. GOAL was the first organisation to implement annex 7 of the Dayton Peace Agreement – the right to freedom of movement of refugees and displaced persons – in its truest form in Bosnia, which won GOAL widespread praise from UN agencies.

• GOAL’s team entered Sierra Leone in 1999 where a vicious civil war had left 20,000 dead and a devastated people in its wake. GOAL took immediate responsibility for a camp for displaced people, and set up mobile clinics to bring health care to street children. By July of that year, with no humanitarian aid getting through, GOAL set up a supplementary feeding programme in the Kenema district, feeding approximately 2,500 malnourished children.

• Hurricane Mitch, one of the worst tropical storms in decades, devastated Honduras in 1998, and claimed the lives of almost 6,000 people. GOAL sent in a team of emergency specialists to assess damage, help with emergency aid and formulate long-term development plans. During her visit to Honduras in 1999, the President of Ireland, Mary Mc Aleese, visited the GOAL site and was highly impressed with GOAL's activities, which included the construction of several hundred houses for survivors.

•GOAL was one of the first NGOs to respond to calls for assistance from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNCHR) in 1994, in the wake of the Rwandan genocide which saw 1 million people slaughtered. When 40,000 victims died in a cholera epidemic in Goma, it was GOALies who organised burial teams when no one else was willing to do so. United Nations High Commissioner, Mary Robinson, later paid tribute to GOAL’s response.

• Somalia experienced the most tragic year in its modern history in 1992. Plagued by conflict, devastated by famine, and ignored by most of the international community. GOAL provided food and medical assistance to thousands of vulnerable people.

• By 1984, GOAL medical teams were working at the frontline of the Ethiopian famine that wiped out 1 million people. GOAL has continued operating in Ethiopia since then, implementing programmes in health care, education, food and development, as well as street children projects in Addis Ababa. Vegetable seed provision, water and sanitation and hygiene support have since become a major focus for GOAL in the region.

• In 1979, GOAL entered Uganda bringing supplies to those dying in the Karamoja famine, where over 20% of the population starved to death.

• GOAL was one of the first Western agencies to enter Cambodia in 1979 bringing medicines and supplies to a population traumatised by a genocide that claimed the lives of over 2 million people.

• GOAL began supporting mother and child health care programmes in India in 1977. In 1983, GOAL’s first programme for street children was implemented in Calcutta. The programme has developed and expanded annually since, rescuing over 70,000 children from lives of degradation and abuse.