MARY ROBINSON - TO THE ONE WORLD QUILT PROJECT AT THE ROYAL HOSPITAL, KILMAINHAM
KILMAINHAM, ON 17 NOVEMBER, 1993
- It is a great honour to be a participant in the One World Quilt Project. The very commendable aim of this project is to create awareness of global development issues and the inter-dependence between people on this planet. What better way of doing that than by emphasising the inter-dependence between all of us here on this island and the strength we have when we come together as one and address our various problems together.
- This project began in a small way when the Irish Countrywomen's Association associated themselves with this project and asked as many as possible of their Guilds to be involved. While the ICA started the ball rolling, as it were, many other voluntary organisations throughout the length and breadth of Ireland indicated their interest in being associated with the project. Community-based women's groups in Dublin, Cork, Belfast and Galway and in many other parts of the country, became involved. In addition to the women's groups, other organisations such as the Bahá'í faith, for example, have also made a valuable contribution.
- The 59 groups represented on this Quilt each have their own story to tell. Each have their own unique contribution to make to Irish society and to the world community in which they live. The symbolism of a Quilt could not be more appropriate. It shows our inter-dependence as disparate groups in a nation and emphasises our dependence on the rest of the world.
- Within a single lifetime this planet has become smaller. We watch on our television screens the anguish and the pain and the suffering which is all about us on this small planet. The most alarming aspect of what we see is that we are not seeing things which are a world away. We are seeing things which, with modern transport, are only three, four or five hours from our own comfortable homes. We can no longer, therefore, afford to ignore what goes on around us in the rest of the world. We now know in a way we never knew before that the scenes we see depicted in the media could easily be scenes from our own lives, the children in distress with hunger could so easily be our own children. The street people with no homes to go to, with no permanent roofs over their head, could so easily be our own immediate neighbours.
- The message of the One World Quilt is that we are all in this together wherever we reside on this planet and by binding together and using our strength in numbers, there is nothing we cannot overcome.
- On another level entirely, this Quilt is a significant achievement. It is no co-incidence that today's launch takes place in the Irish Museum of Modern Art. For this Quilt is a real work of art. Every panel depicting a different aspect or a different theme of importance to the group who contributed it, is an individual work of art. I have been greatly impressed by what I have seen. Not just the quality of the work and the stitching that has gone into the making of the panels but on a deeper level, the underlying artistic symbolism of the various themes chosen.
- If I was to select one single theme that impressed me, it would be the travellers chosen theme of water. Nothing could be more illustrative of the shared problems that we in the relatively better off part of this One World have with those in the poorer southern regions. For the travelling community here in Ireland, water is important. It must be clean and it must be accessible and it is absolutely essential to healthy living for both adults and children. In the so-called Third World too, water is of immense significance.
- The availability of clean, disease free water is literally a matter of life and death for millions of our fellow human beings. In selecting this theme, the travelling community have chosen a subject which clearly demonstrates our inter-dependence as one people sharing one world.
- Let this Quilt be an example to us all of the need which is ever more urgent now, aware as we are of our limited resources, to come together as these various groups throughout Ireland have come together and to meet whatever challenges the world may throw at us together in unity.