TOOWOOMBA engineering surveyor Barry Walsh is a practical bloke with a practical faith – which is good news for several East Timorese Catholic communities.
The way Barry puts it “I see a need, I decide what needs to be done, send a note out to donors and often what is needed seems to fall out of the sky”.
For these communities, this Christmas and indeed their entire future will be so much brighter as they enjoy the fruits of programs he has helped organise.
The largest and most successful of these programs is the Seed For Food Program being run through several Salesian Don Bosco centres in East Timor.
These centres include the Fuiloro Agricultural School, the Laga Girls’ College, the Ossa-Huna community and an orphanage at Baguia.
Generous responses to Barry’s appeals by the Toowoomba diocese and other parishes elsewhere in Australia have funded the purchase of crop seeds, landed thousands of chickens, supplied portable typewriters to students, all aimed at developing the self-sufficiency of groups of East Timorese people.
For Barry the reward is the good-news stories that return of the progress being made with the funds and other items collected.
“Take the Laga Girls’ Orphanage,” he said.
“All the sisters there as well as the 230 or so girls now get three meals a day as a result of the crops they are growing and animals they are raising.
“They weren’t even able to do this before the 1999 war.”
More good news came in from the Fuiloro Agricultural School recently.
“Last year they reported that the 950 chooks they had been sent from Australia were producing about 940 eggs a week on average.
“This year the school had made enough money to buy itself a new tractor and other agricultural implements.
“It also uses the eggs to put on school lunches.”
Barry was also delighted recently when Salesian Sister Alexandrina Pinto, from Fuiloro Women’s College, visited Toowoomba’s Sacred Heart parish to convey her thanks and update parishioners on the progress of her home region’s people.
At Fuiloro, Sr Pinto is in charge of a training centre for more than 100 women aged 19 to 26 from surrounding villages, many victims of abuse.
Given Barry works full-time, how does he manage to co-ordinate this sustained effort to get these struggling communities back on their feet?
“I’ve found I can do it in my spare time,” he said.
What spare time?
“The time I free up by smoking less ciggies, drinking less booze, watching less telly and limiting the amount of sleep I get,” he said.
How did he come to get involved?
“I sometimes ask myself this: Why me?
“I don’t recall how I got involved in the whole thing … intervention from the ‘bloke upstairs’ I guess.
“As for East Timor – with the war of 1999/2001 it seemed logical, as a very close neighbour to Australia was more in need of help than other countries further afield.”
Barry’s practical skills helped as he had been involved in research and development with international agricultural chemical companies.
On one visit to several Salesian-run centres, he quickly saw the potential of “the high quality and quantity of red and black local soil to grow crops” and also noted high rainfalls four months of the year.
“However, seed stocks, crops and buildings had all been totally destroyed by the war so a seed program was a good starting point to help these communities get back on their feet,” he said.
As often with such faith-based projects, the progress Barry has made has often seemed miraculous.
“I started out a few years ago with about $50 cash from the sale of some aluminium cans. I figured I was going to need 30 to 50 grand to achieve what I thought was necessary to help these communities.”
These projects can really chew through the money.
One aid shipment required $5400 for each 1000 chickens landed in Dili, $2500 for shade cloth to protect seedlings and $2500 in punnets for seedlings.
But the money came in, and continues to.
“In all, last year we found $70,000 for projects,” Barry said.
“This year so far the figure is $38,700.”
How does the money come in?
“Here in Toowoomba I have the local Sacred Heart parish primary school collect used aluminium cans each week and these cans are sold, raising about $500 a year.
“Then there are the people who respond generously when donations are requested.
“These donations come from Catholic and non-Catholic donors from all over the Darling Downs.
“Just recently, two Toowoomba Catholics both sent a cheque for $200.
“Then there was the woman at the end of one Mass who came up and presented a cheque for several hundred dollars, saying ‘I heard something good was going on in Timor'”.
Barry particularly likes that he has personal contact with the leaders of the communities where the funds are sent.
He said he was also guided as to the reliability of those people to whom he sends money by the director of the Salesian Mission Office in Australia Br Michael Lynch.
Barry also organises and sends away container loads of items for East Timor including toothpaste, toothbrushes and clothes.
These are packed by students from the Salesian College in Chadstone, Melbourne, and sent from there.
This year he has sent three consignments – one at Easter, one in July and one in September.
He works in with the school principal Fr Chris Ford whose parents Kev and Maree Ford and brothers live in and around Toowoomba.
Some manual typewriters sent in the last consignment have proved particularly valuable in teaching keyboard skills in communities that lack the electricity to power computers.
Their value is an illustration of what impoverished communities can do with our cast-offs.
The Sacred Heart parish’s Legion of Mary group collected the typewriters.
“They were able to round up seven and include four spare ribbons per typewriter,” Barry said.
“Now these typewriters are being used in 18 classes with up to 24 people per class six days a week.
Among these classes is one for seniors on a Saturday.”
Barry said much work remained to help these East Timorese communities rebuild and become self-supporting again.
“In 2010, I would like to focus on providing more help to the five orphanages under the St Don Bosco flag there,” he said.
“There are two girls’ orphanages at Venilale and Lago, two boys’ ones at Quelicai and Los Palos and a combined one at Baguia.”
To enquire about supporting these projects contact Barry Walsh on (07) 4634 1839.
