St Joseph's Donaghmore embarks on Cambodia charity trip

While most students and teachers will be putting up their feet during the summer holidays, an enterprising group from a Donaghmore school will be helping the homeless in South East Asia.

A total of seven pupils and six staff from St Joseph’s Grammar School, Donaghmore, have raised £26,000 to fund a Habitat for Humanity project in Cambodia.

The group will now give up a part of their summer holidays to help the building charity.

Organiser Philip McMaster said the charity expedition had been borne out the ethos of the school, which was founded by the Daughters of the Cross.

“The trip is a way of continuing the ethos of charity which is the school’s founding legacy”, he said.

“We will be in Cambodia until July 11, working for several weeks in Siem Reap.”

St Joseph’s was founded in 1922 by the Daughters of the Cross from Belgium, who departed the school in 2006 to move to Dublin.

The co-educational voluntary grammar school has approximately 680 pupils and promotes a caring and nurturing environment for its students.

The school, which has an Irish medium education stream, also fosters excellent relationships with the local community and has strong cultural and business links with the area.

Habitat for Humanity promotes decent, affordable housing for all, and supports the global community’s commitment to housing as a basic human right. The charity advocates for a just and fair housing policy to eliminate the constraints that contribute to poverty housing.

In Cambodia, the charity aims to help over 6,000 families living in six separate provinces with the greatest housing need.

They provide shelter solutions alongside families in need of affordable housing and develop new partnerships with volunteers, donors, sponsors, churches, NGOs, local authorities and government officials.