The Ambassador of the Republic of Ireland to Sierra Leone, Claire Buckley Lesley said on Monday March 14, 2022, that the Embassy will observe St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, 2022.
She made this statement during a press briefing at the Irish Embassy on Spur Road in Freetown.
St. Patrick’s Day is the National Day of Ireland. St. Patrick was a Christian missionary who is believed to have brought the Christian faith into Ireland in the 5th Century.
St. Patrick’s Day observes the death of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. The holiday has evolved into a celebration of Irish culture with parades, special foods, music, dancing, drinking and a whole lot of green.
He is also reputed to have driven all the snakes out of Ireland. According to history, Patrick died on 17 March and was buried at Downpatrick in Ireland, thereafter the festivities were spread by the Irish emigrants and missionaries across the world.
In 1845 Ireland suffered a catastrophic famine in which more than one million people died of hunger and disease, and in the years that followed almost two million people emigrated.
Every year since 2010, a number of world-famous landmarks are turned green as part of St. Patrick’s Day celebration, these landmarks include; the Great Wall of China; Victoria Falls in Zambia; Egypt’s great pyramids and the Empire State Building in New York. The Greening process highlights the profile of Ireland and also showcases the important touristic destinations of countries outside of Ireland.
Ambassador Claire Buckley said that this year’s St. Patrick’s Day should be use as a moment to reflect, empathize and to show solidarity in the past challenging years in the fight against COVID-19.
She pointed out that the long term and high impact initiatives between Sierra Leone and Ireland centered on core values of combating poverty and addressing inequality and vulnerability, governance and rule of law, rights and services for women and girls, education, health and nutrition and food security.
“Ireland’s current development cooperation in Sierra Leone is focused on strategic priorities to ensure that women and children have improved nutritional status; women and girls are empowered to realize their potentials and their rights; girls’ access to benefits from quality education and that all citizens particularly women are empowered to engage with inclusive and accountable democratic institutions and processes,” she said.
Ambassador Buckley noted that they would continue to focus on well-
established development cooperation programmes and also to seek opportunities to deepen political, economic and cultural ties between Ireland and Sierra Leone.
By George M.O. Williams