Winner Father Liam Hayes

Father Liam's sister, together with one of his collaborators, receives the HelpArgentina Social Ambassadors Award on his behalf.

"Thank you so much for your Congradulations. It means so much to me and will inspire our big number of helpers to continue and expand the work for Argentina", said Father Liam.

Father Liam Hayes is Irish, living part of the year in Oberá, Misiones, and the other in the county of Limerick, in Ireland. In 1989, he founded a home, the "Hogar Santa Teresa del Niño Jesús" that cares for people with mental incapacities and motor disabilities that have been abandoned by their families for various reasons. Later, he founded another home called the "Virgen de Lujan" that cares for elderly people abandoned by their families or that have no one to live with. All of this has been done with funds personally raised by Father Liam in Ireland and Great Britain.

Thanks to these programs, these people are given a dignified life, in human conditions, and always accompanied by people who care about them and want to be with them. A few years before this, Father Liam also founded a rehabilitation center, "Hogar Santa Teresa del Niño Jesús," that gives medical attention not only to people in his other homes, but also to all the poor people in the neighborhood who need help. For all this, Father Liam carries out many types of collections, organizing events in Ireland, touching the hearts of those that have the most in Ireland to give money to those who need the most in Argentina. In Ireland, he receives all that he wants to send and brings it to Argentina in a container. The last container that he brought, a few weeks ago, contained 20 orthopedic beds, wheel chairs, blankets, clothing for children, old furniture for homes, etc. Thanks to his constant work and his coming and going, he found a charitable group in Ireland to help the people in the homes to be recognized legally. The group is called the "Saint Teresa Oberá Support Fund Trust" CHY 17476.

In the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, Father Liam is somewhat well known for his humanitarian work in Argentina. The case in Argentina is much the opposite however. As he does all of his work and collections in Ireland, in Argentina he has gone by unknown more or less. Only the local radio stations give him free time to make announcements about such things as a raffle for Christmas, or a particular mass being given, etc. However, in Ireland, the work that Father Liam does is so valued that on March 18th, 2004, the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, visited one of his homes in Argentina and opened one of them as well.

Father Liam has 30 people that help him with the maintenance of the homes and the rehabilitation center. He is the head of a group of people that raise funds and collect goods to send to Argentina. He also collaborates with Irish volunteers that travel to Argentina just to work for free for a few months in his homes.