Outstanding achievements were again recognised at the Daily Post Women of the Year awards, as Emma Pinch reports
The audience heard how Mossley Hill nursery owner, Sue Poole, raised more than £21,000 for a school in Hyderabad, India, after visiting the region and being affected by the plight of children there. It now educates 75 street children and has 13 teachers, and everyone gets a hot meal every day of the year. Accepting her award, she told how she had been saving for IVF at the time of her visit to India.
“I thought ‘this is ridiculous, our money could improve the lives of so many people’,” she says. “I didn’t have IVF and put the money into India instead.”
Marie McCourt helped 500 families cope with the devastation of having a loved one taken in violent circumstances, despite suffering the loss of her own daughter, Helen.
She also runs media and police training sessions to help them sensitively deal with the bereaved.
“I’m absolutely gobsmacked,” Marie McCourt said, accepting her nomination. “I would particularly like to thank Pat Green, who was the lady who actually initiated SAMM Merseyside. I think she is a very strong woman. Everybody in our SAMM community has had a terrible personal loss and they do this work in the name of someone, their loved one, for them to be remembered and deal with their loss.”
Liverpool Daily Post editor Mark Thomas said the standard of the finalists was extremely impressive.
But one entry particularly stood out for the Liverpool Daily Post Special Award.
“The Liverpool Daily Post is extremely proud to be involved in these awards which honour such remarkable women,” he said. “None more so than Marie McCourt, whose courage and determination are truly inspiring.”
Jane Morgan was another finalist who enjoyed huge public support. Jane is head of midwifery education at Edge Hill University. She set up a link between St Luke’s Church, in Formby, with a severely dilapidated hospital in Rwanda and raised £24,000 to have it rebuilt. She then set up a scholarship to allow a nurse to train much-needed midwives at the hospital, and she regularly gives up her holidays to work in the hospital herself and pass on her experience.
This year’s competition, sponsored by Merseyrail and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, attracted a record 6,354 votes. Wirral Autistic Society collected £1,350 in donations.
OPINION: PAGE 8
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