Cake Sale Duet at Meteors

Oxfam Ireland Press Release
11 February 2008

Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody and Irish songwriter and singer Lisa Hannigan will perform one of the Meteor Music Awards' highlights on February 15th. "Some Surprise" is a simple and beautiful song from the double platinum selling CD The Cake Sale. Masterminded by Brian Crosby of Bell X1, The Cake Sale has proved a very effective way of raising money and awareness for Oxfam Ireland 's overseas work and Make Trade Fair campaign. Released in Ireland in 2006, the CD has gone on to achieve acclaim in both the UK and America .

Gary and Lisa are both long-standing supporters of Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign. The campaign, launched in 2001, has achieved significant success in highlighting the often complex issues involved in the international trading arena and the negative impact which many global trade policies have on the world's poorest people.

Jonny Quinn and Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol follow
Benedicta through the streets of Mbuya.

Snow Patrol has been supporting Oxfam's work for several years now. In 2005 the band kindly agreed to take time out from the recording of an album in Dingle to be dumped on with rice. Not the normal break but nevertheless an important one as they did their bit to highlight one of Oxfam's key concerns, namely, that subsidised agricultural commodities, like rice, were being dumped by wealthy countries on poor countries. This dumping was often leading to products being sold at up to 75 per cent less than what they cost to produce, putting local farmers out of business.

In 2007, Snow Patrol band members Gary Lightbody and Jonny Quinn visited some of Oxfam's overseas work in Uganda . This trip was shared with Save the Children. After visiting child soldiers in Northern Uganda, Jonny and Gary joined Oxfam staff in Kampala and were shown some of the work with which Oxfam is assisting in the Mbuya slum area of Kampala .

Oxfam believes people have certain fundamental rights, such as the right to live with dignity, a right to be heard, a right to make a living and the rights to basic services like healthcare. In Mbuya, Jonny and Gary saw how Oxfam's rhetoric on ‘rights' came to life. During the trip they visited the Kinawataka Women's Initiative and met the charismatic Benedicta Manyonga Nabingi. Benedicta, 56, worked for 20 years at the Bank of Uganda until leaving due to a spinal illness.

In Gary 's own words…

“One in particular I'll never forget. Benedicta is the leader of the Kinawataka Women's Initiative. Buoyant and clearly in charge she showed us her work, her home and some of the homes nearby. She not only created and runs the women's initiative that makes bags and belts from simple drinking straws but she also looks after several children whose parents have been lost to war, AIDS or poverty. Each room in her little house is filled with bunk beds, some containing children who giggle at the tall skinny white fella as I pass. Benedicta is a force of nature and seems to be holding this community together with her two strong hands. She later takes us on a trip through the slums to the house of one of her organisation who had not the strength to make it today as she is in the later ravages of AIDS.”

Gary and Jonny's visit to Mbuya highlighted how in very difficult circumstances, in which people are living in poverty and with life threatening diseases, there are amazing acts of humanity which are supported by organisations like Oxfam. Initiatives like Benedicta's are directly tied to Oxfam's rights-based approach to human development and are instrumental to not only and vitally ensuring access to life-saving medicines but also seek to ensure that people's right to a living, to a voice, to live in dignity are respected.

Gary continues…

“Oxfam needs to do everything they can to support people like Benedicta and to encourage local people to help themselves and those around them. Aid alone cannot rebuild a ruined country. National and personal pride need restored and that can only be through the empowerment of the local people.”

To date The Cake Sale has raised over €250 000. This money is vital to ensure that organisations like the Kinawataka continue to be supported with their life changing work.

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Oxfam Ireland is an independent member of Oxfam International- a group of thirteen non-governmental agencies dedicated to fighting poverty and related injustice around the world.

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