Tattysallagh Crib Festival goes online

THE hugely popular annual crib festival at Tattysallagh will not go ahead this year due to Covid restrictions, however, retired teacher Babs (Helen) Barrett is posting photographs of the wonderful array of cribs on each day of Advent.

Donations from the online Tattysallagh’s Nativity Crib Festival will go towards Mellon Educate – an organisation that brings aid to those living in the poorest conditions in South Africa.

Babs has been a passionate supporter of the charity since she first volunteered to travel to the shanty towns on the outskirts of Cape Town after she retired from St Conor’s school in 2010. The charity has built in excess of 20,000 homes for people who lived in shacks in the most appalling conditions.

On return from Cape Town, when the abject poverty was foremost in her mind, she decided to fundraise for this very valuable project. She organised a display of nativity sets from around the world at her home in Tattysallagh as she had accumulated a wonderful array of almost 300 cribs over the years. Diverse in their style, shape and size, the cribs reflect the culture of the country where it was made.

Babs was so immensely inspired by the great turnout at the previous year’s event that in 2018, she extended the exhibition to include a carol service and a depiction of the nativity in a live crib performance shown at intervals throughout the day.

The Mellon Educate school building blitz to South Africa did not take place this year. Instead, the charity have funded food parcels and sanitation pack deliveries to the impoverished people living in overcrowded shanty towns where the unhygienic conditions and lack of effective sanitation encourage Covid-19 transmission.

If you would like to make a donation to Mellon Educate, it would be greatly appreciated and it will make a huge difference to the lives of poverty-stricken families. You can donate by visiting the website link – www.justgiving.com/fundraising/babs-barrett