The Igbo Union of Drogheda celebrated its 10th anniversary with a party and awards ceremony on Saturday 29 June.
The union’s work includes charity within the community and advocating for local people, educating members on Igbo heritage, and providing courses to assist people from ethnic minorities to settle in the Co Louth town, said member Medua Okonkwo.
“Among our aims was to make an effort to bring our children together and to try and improve and educate them on our language, our culture, our traditions,” added union president Ignatius Chukwurah.
However, budget constraints and a busy membership have presented challenges for the socio-cultural group, which traces its roots to Igboland in southeast Nigeria
“You know, the country we’re in, everyone is struggling to survive,” said Chukwurah. “So it can be a struggle to meet our own family commitments and to get all the members together. And financially nothing is easy. So sometimes it is difficultt for us to meet our obligations.
“We are supposed to have a place of meeting, [but] because of financial constraints, it becomes difficult to hold our meetings. So we keep moving our meetings from one house to another. We still meet in members’ homes because we cannot get a place of our own.”
But despite these challenges, Chukwurah feels the union has been able to “come through them”. Both Chukwuruh and Okonkwo cited a successful fundraiser for Drogheda Homeless Aid.
“It went well, and we want to use that as a stepping stone to improve further reaching out to the community,” said Chukwurah, “and then if we are able to get more members and have enough funds, we are looking to have a community hall where other services can be rendered.”
More than 300 people gathered to celebrate a decade of Igbo community outreach in Drogheda and look forward to another 10 years.
The plan for the immediate future, said Chukwurah, is “to see how we can improve in bringing our children to understand our culture better and to be able to reach out to the community by participating in community services.”
