Bebhinn Ramsay turned her grief into a vital project in Brazil, writes FIONA MCCANN.

‘I THOUGHT I’D never smile again,” says Bebhinn Ramsay of how she saw her life after the sudden death of her husband Alastair Ramsay in May 2007.

Yet, as she speaks with growing animation from her new home in southern Brazil, you can tell this 33-year-old Dubliner has a smile on her face. “My ongoing happiness is a tribute to Alastair. He brought only beautiful things into my life.”

The latest of these beautiful things is a project called Recontar, which is funded through a trust established in Alastair’s honour, and which brought Bebhinn back to Latin America to work with Brazil’s poorest families.

Recontar works in tandem with a local hospital, identifying sick children, and helping their families to address the root causes of their ill health and help improve their lives.

These are children like Paulo and Enso (pictured below), young brothers with a penchant for mischief and Thomas the Tank Engine, both of whom have spent much of their short lives in and out of hospitals in Florianopolis.

Enso has recently been given the all-clear, but Paulo is HIV positive and faces into a lifetime of hospital visits. It’s a diagnosis all too common among the children in the area, where HIV and severe malnutrition present the biggest health risks.

Recontar is hoping to help by replicating the methods of a successful project called Renascer, founded 18 years ago in Rio de Janeiro to work with the families of sick children with the aim of giving them a future outside the crowded hospital wards.

During his life, Alastair Ramsay was one of Renascer’s trustees. After his death, friends and family set up the Alastair Ramsay Charitable Trust (Arch) in his honour, and the money it raises now goes to fund Recontar, which was launched on February 1st by Damien Rice in Florianopolis.

Just three months in, the money raised through Arch is already helping six Brazilian families break the cycle of poverty, with more being identified all the time. While Bebhinn and her local team in Florianopolis work with the Brazilian families in need, Alastair’s own family and friends are busy organising events – like this Saturday’s black-tie ball in Dublin – to fund them.

“Rather than being depressed and thinking life has no meaning, Arch is a way that we can still remember Alastair as I hope he would want to be remembered and continue what he would want to do,” says Bebhinn. “It’s a celebration of his life.”

For more information on the Alastair Ramsay Charitable Trust, and for tickets for the Arch black tie ball, see alastairramsay.net