Dublin woman plans to set up Irish aid project for children in Mongolia

A DUBLIN born woman who plans to set up the first Irish aid project in Mongolia has called for a new crusade for children's rights.

Ms Christina Noble has run a centre for street children in Vietnam since 1990, where she has witnessed a growing incidence of sexual exploitation of children, often by western tourists.

"Childhood is becoming an endangered species. Every minute a child is being attacked or a `snuff' movie is being made yet no one is standing up and saying `stop'," she said. "Paedophiles come from all classes, they have the money and they are determined. They seem to enjoy complete freedom to do as they please."

In Australia, concerned parents have organised a series of rallies for action against paedophilia, to culminate with a vigil outside government offices later this year. Ms Noble said Irish people should follow suit.

She also wants more help for the perpetrators of paedophilia, as well as their victims. "They will became crippled adults unless they are helped.

Ms Noble's passion for children's rights is rooted in her own horrendous upbringing in Dublin's Liberties in the 1940s in conditions of dire poverty. Her father was an alcoholic, her mother died when she was 10. Brutally treated as a child, sent to an industrial school, gangraped as a teenager, her memories of Ireland are utterly bleak.

Ms Noble left Ireland 33 years ago and was running a chip shop in Birmingham when in 1971 she had a dream about Vietnam. It took almost 20 years before she finally made it there in 1989. "When I arrived, I was nobody; I had no credentials, no contacts, no money.

However, with a determination to alleviate the suffering of the children she knew from her own background, she set about raising money with determination. A local oil company helped her start up with a grant of $10,000. She sang in clubs, made speeches for money.

When she couldn't interest the British media in the plight of Vietnam, she sold them something else, the story of her own life, published as Bridge Across My Sorrows in 1994.

So far 60,000 children have received help in Mama Tina's" centre, which provides medical services, a dental programme, schooling and shelter. "I have just a little bit of knowledge, but all the passion in the world to help get what the children need.

Ms Noble is in Dublin this week to publicise her plans for a similar centre in Mongolia, from where she has just returned. "They have the same problems - children being eaten alive by lice, suffering from syphillis and herpes - with no one to help because Mongolia is not fashionable."

After decades of communist control, the country is opening up, "but the Mongolians lost everything in those years, even their chopstick".

Ms Noble has no family left in Ireland, though she plans to visit her mother's grave in Mount Jerome Cemetery. Coming here still gives her a knot in her stomach, she said, but she has a dream of eventually settling in a cottage in Wicklow. "I'd love to be able to get on a bus and say `I'm going home'. I haven't been able to say that since I was 10."

. Christina Noble talks about her life and her work in Vietnam in St Ann's Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Admission is free.