A documentary, produced in Mayo, will be broadcast on Castlebar Radio station CRCfm on Monday evening, January 29.
The documentary Voices of Nepal follows Castlebar nurse and humanitarian worker Aisling Neary on a journey to Nepal in the aftermath of a major earthquake in 2015.
Aisling Neary is familiar to Mayo people as a result of the many humanitarian projects which she has fundraised for in the county over the past 19 years. She is a self-funding volunteer who supports herself and all funds raised are used to assist in areas of suffering and deprivation throughout the world.
Aisling has worked on projects in Romania, Moldova, India, South Africa, Ghana, and Nepal. When she left Nepal in 2015 Aisling thought her work there was complete, but a few months later Nepal was struck with a massive earthquake which caused huge devastation and killed several thousand people. She began fundraising and returned to Nepal with financial assistance to help the Nepalese people.
Aisling Neary is a regular contributor to the Mayo Arts programme on CRCfm and when she returned to Nepal she interviewed local people who had experienced the earthquake and were involved in the recovery and rebuilding of their country. The documentary outlines the suffering experienced by the Nepalese people in the wake of the earthquake.
Apart from Aisling, three other people featured in the documentary have Mayo connections; Elayne Kenny from Kilmovee had just arrived in Nepal at the start of a year long trip to Asia and she experienced the earthquake first hand. Newport woman Trish Ginnelly spent many years in America and now lives in Nepal where she runs a charity organisation which helps to educate children, and some of the money which Aisling had raised was used to help the children and their families. Mayo resident Gert Venghaus was head of the International Red Cross Organisation in Nepal for many years and he was deployed as an advisor to the Nepal government following the earthquake.
The documentary Voices of Nepal is funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and will be broadcast on CRCfm on Monday. It will also be available online at www.crcfm.ie or on the tune-in app. A podcast will also be available on the crcfm.ie website under Monday Documentary. The documentary is narrated by Aidan Crowley and produced by Joanna McNicholas.
