International Dinner

A very well attended and successful International evening when we welcomed our guest speaker, Mohammad Sesay, a human rights lawyer who has worked with Medicin Sans Frontieres (MSF), plus Darcey Amery and Adele Gale, members of the Interact Club at Pencoed Comprehensive School. All are picture above with Acting President David Hubbard – Darcey and Adele are seen receiving a certificate from Mohammad acknowledging the Interact Club donation of £100 to Medicin Sans Frontieres.

Mohammad gave us a truly enlightening talk covering what MSF is, what a typical MSF intervention looks like and his personal experiences while working with MSF.

MSF has around 67,000 local and international staff working in over 70 countries, in some of the most challenging places in the world. Their projects are supported by office teams in 42 countries spread across Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and Australasia. 

MSF were formed by doctors and journalists in 1971 who spoke out about atrocities committed by the Nigeria government during the civil war and accompanying famine in 1960s. Their aim was to create an organisation focusing on emergency medicine, which could dispatch aid quickly, efficiently and impartially to people in vulnerable situations all over the world, but also bear witness about what they were seeing.  

MSF specialises predominantly in emergency interventions. When people refer to humanitarian work they often refer to emergency or development activities.So a typical intervention may take place after a natural disaster or catastrophe. Such as a flood, typhoon, a medical emergency or a conflict.

Thanks were given to Mohammad for a wonderful presentation by Rtn. Ron Eccles, chair of our International Team.