Michael Elmore-Meegan

““Waterborne diseases kill millions every year, over 1.3 billion people have no clean water. ICROSS has provided safe drinking water to over 300 000 people through innovative ground breaking research spanning three decades””

““People can’t eat our pity, dehydrated children can’t drink our sorrow nor can a child be educated by our anger at injustice. No one has ever been lifted out of poverty by us being overwhelmed or shocked. The only thing that ends poverty is our actions.””

““The biggest lie and dishonesty about change or the impact of projects is created by the lords of poverty who profit from the business and industry of aid.””

““There is no such thing as change in international development, unless it belongs to the people who want to change””

““The future lies in education, for 36 years ICROSS has focused on educating girls and making sure that they see their own potential””

““That someday there will be no them and us. There will be no colour and no differences between us. There will be only one human family working together.””

““Vision without action which fails to touch the lives of the poor is not vision, but self delusion.””

““Be quiet enough to know what to say with your actions. Never limit yourself, live the impossible, always step beyond yourself. This is what you were born to be, to become light in a world on great need. We may not be the solution, but are part of the solution.””

““Today we can change the future for someone, we have only to act.””

“Because of the distrust that has grown from our experience, we are very careful whom we welcome. We are selective in our companions, we look suspiciously those who sit beside us in a bar and start talking to us: “is he crazy? What’s he up to?” we wonder. The city becomes a desert. With groups of friends who are nobody else’s friends. As Emily Dickinson, the reclusive poet, once wrote: “The soul selects its own society, then shuts the door.””

“If someone humiliates and hurts us, it is difficult to give them a second chance and turn the other cheek. They might just take another swing at us, we are not ready for that kind of abuse. Who needs it?”

“We want to be good, but it’s difficult to know a safe place to start. We want to reach out our hand in friendship, but we don’t want it bitten off.”

“We know how it feels to be in the wrong and have someone shout at us or frown and walk past,we feel dreadful. We try to be friendly but so often it turns into a strained smile as someone replies curtly and asks what we want.”

“We have all, at one time or another, been used, or have experienced someone being unfair to us.”

“If a young mother has a job as a secretary in a company trying to cut expenses, where they start giving her the work of two secretaries and making extra demands on her, she will do all she can to please her employers. In fact, they are causing her to worry, hurry to work and rush home late to her expectant family. Thus, pressure and demands in a business setting lead to anxiety and tension at home. This is what begins to happen in our civilization when we put profit before people, and getting work done before the feelings of those we work with.”

“Ulcers, high blood pressure and heart attacks, insomnia and depression, all stem from trying to do more than we can in a situation that has lost its humanity.”

“Anxiety is often related to having to perform and act an acceptable role in order to be admitted into relationships.”

“All our emotional scars and mental stress come from the pain of being fully accepted and cherished in ourselves.”

“The deepest and most enduring thirst common to us all is the desire for love and happiness. You and I spend a great part of our lives struggling towards self-fulfilment and joy, while at the same time we are very occupied in the daily responsibilities to our families, our work, the countless little things that absorb our time.”

““There is a dangerous deception within international organizations, called Participation of local communities. This is essentially based on a lie. Communities are invited to participate on the terms of the donor who has the money. Unless all the choices and decisions are owned and made by the communities, there can be no authentic lasting development.””