by Mary Cullen

Lorraine Currie, the new Chief Executive of the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, is on a mission: to enthuse a new generation of Scots for the work of SCIAF and the challenge of building a more just world.

She is well qualified to take on the task. A woman of deep faith, Lorraine spent over 20 years working with refugees and poor communities in the Middle East and Africa, before returning to Scotland to head up SCIAF’s overseas programmes in 2010. Last October she became the charity’s CEO, replacing Alistair Dutton, who took up the post of Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis in Rome.

Born in the village of Clelland in Lanarkshire, where both her grandfathers were miners, Lorraine has deep roots in the Scottish Catholic community and the social teaching of the church. She trained as a nurse and worked in Scotland before volunteering for a 12-month placement in an Anglican mission hospital in Egypt. She ‘caught the bug’ and stayed on to spend the next two decades working alongside some of the poorest people in the region, learning about the complexities and challenges of confronting poverty and injustice. She came back to the UK twice – to complete master’s degrees in refugee studies and migration and international health and development.

Approach

Those 20 years helped shape her approach to international development at a time of major political and humanitarian challenges. During the Oslo peace process she was in the Palestinian hospital in Cairo when Yasser Arafat visited: a ‘very historic event’. She is deeply distressed by the situation in Palestine today. SCIAF has added its voice to calls for peace and respect for international humanitarian law.

Lorraine became director of a mission programme for stateless African refugees; founded a voluntary organisation for those with mental health problems; and was director of a Bakhita Centre in Sudan, alongside Comboni Missionaries. The centre, called after Josephine Bakhita, the patron saint of Sudan, provided health, education and legal services for refugees. Josephine is also the patron saint of victims of human trafficking and was herself a survivor of kidnapping and enslavement.

Lorraine became a senior public health officer in Uganda during the long running conflict with the Lords Resistance Army; ran a UNICEF programme to prevent the transmission of HIV from mothers to children; and was a technical advisor on HIV/Aids for Eastern Europe and the Middle East with Catholic Relief Services.

Mary Cullen is editor of Open House

Photo of Lorraine Currie courtesy of SCIAF