Fáilte Amnesty – Community Sponsorship – The Open Community

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Speakers

Colm O’Gorman, Executive Director, Amnesty International Ireland

Kevin O’Leary, Irish Red Cross

Anna Kierans, Community Sponsorship

Shahera Bourhan, Community Sponsorship

Full Event Details

Community Sponsorship (CS) is a new innovative way for people from Ireland to be able to give support and show solidarity to refugees. So often people want to be able to do something tangible for another person that needs it and Community Sponsorship is an amazing way that people can do this.

Communities across Ireland have come together to sponsor a refugee family who have agreed to participate in this resettlement programme. The family then travels to Ireland where they move into the community that has sponsored them. One of the most fantastic things about Community Sponsorship is the friendships that form between the people that participate from the communities and between the resettled family and their new community. This programme reaches a local, national and International scale, it is a global movement of ordinary people that are making a real and lasting change in peoples lives.

Speaker Biographies

Colm O’Gorman

Colm O’Gorman is Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland. He is the founder and former Director of One in Four, the national NGO that supports women and men who have experienced sexual violence. Colm has campaigned extensively at both the national and global level for justice and accountability for victims of sexual violence, and personally initiated ground-breaking litigation on the issue.

Colm has also served as a member of Seanad Éireann, and is an author and regular media commentator on social justice and human rights issues.

Anna Kierans

Anna is a member of one of the first Community Sponsorship Groups established in Ireland in 2019.  Anna felt compelled to do something to support refugees so with other Dublin 6 community members they organised, fund raised and planned for the arrival of the Bourhan family. Since then, Anna has been a huge advocate and driving force for other communities to get involved in Community Sponsorship.  

Shahera Bourhan

Kevin O’Leary is the Community Sponsorship Lead with the Irish Red Cross. Kevin’s previous role as a Senior Migration Caseworker with the Irish Red Cross saw him supporting the resettlement and integration of Iraqi and Syrian’s with Refugee Status. Kevin has over eight years’ experience in high needs case support and is committed to the promotion of an inclusive and intercultural society.

Shahera Bourhan

Shahera and her family were forced to flee Syria in 2014 and they spent the next five years in Lebanon. In 2019 they were one of the first families to come to Ireland through Community Sponsorship. Since arriving in Ireland, Shahera has been a strong advocate for raising awareness about the huge impact Community Sponsorship can make in people’s lives.

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 8 million people who take injustice personally. We are campaigning for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all.

In Ireland, our 20,000 members and supporters campaign on issues like reproductive rights, ending torture and protecting migrant & refugee rights, among others. We are independent of any political ideology, economic interest or religion. We are funded by our members and supporters.

What does Amnesty International do?

• We investigate and expose the facts, whenever and wherever human rights abuses happen.
• We lobby governments and other powerful groups to make sure they respect international law.
• We mobilise millions of supporters around the world to campaign for change and to stand in defence of human rights activists
• We support people to claim their rights through education and training.

Our History

In 1961, British lawyer Peter Benenson was outraged when two Portuguese students were jailed just for raising a toast to freedom. He wrote an article in The Observer and launched a campaign that provoked an unprecedented response. Reprinted in newspapers across the world, his call to action sparked the idea that people everywhere can unite in solidarity for justice and freedom.

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