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Window to the World Award

This award salutes a woman who has demonstrated an indomitable will and determination to bring to our attention the plight of other human beings, changing the way we think about the world

 
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Jane Walker

2009: Jane Walker

If you were presented with 72 shipping containers, what would you do with them? If you’re Jane Walker, founder of the Philippine Community Fund, you’d mix a large dose of imagination with help from volunteer architects, local businesses and engineers, and turn them into a school large enough to educate 1,000 children up to college level.

The new school, opening later this year, will more than double the number of children at the PCF’s current school and move it – and them – away from Manila’s putrefying rubbish dumps where the poorest of the poor eke out a pitiful living selling whatever can be recycled. Disease is rife and the life expectancy just 40 years.

Jane set up the charity in 1996 following a trip to the Philippines. She was horrified by the plight of the children who worked long hours, earning just 8p for a kilo of plastic bottles. ‘Seeing the kids changed my life,’ she says. She determined to find a way to give them a better chance in life. And so the PCF was born.

In 2002, she set up her first school. All the lessons, carefully designed to build up self-esteem, follow an adapted version of the national curriculum. The PCF ensures the 400 pupils are fed throughout the week and sent home with tinned food at the weekend.

All this has been achieved with little help from the Philippine government. But Jane is tenacious and she has had huge support from Peter Beckingham, the recently retired British Ambassador to the Philippines and his wife Jill, now chairman of the PCF UK board of trustees.

Peter says he was struck by the enormity of the task that Jane had taken on. ‘I was impressed at what an unassuming lady she was – there was no selfishness. She had obviously been completely won over by the needs of the children and was simply working to fill them.’
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2008: Ann Cotton
This award salutes a woman whose courage and determination has brought to our attention the educational deprivation of young women in Zimbabwe. On visiting Western Zimbabwe in 1991 she discovered that the lack of financial resources was a major barrier to girls over 12 attending school. She was so incensed by the waste of such talent that on her return to Britain she created CAMFED the Campaign for Female Education first raising funds by baking cakes and selling them in a local market. Fifteen years later she had created a £6 million charity with educational programmes across the sub-Saharan Africa which now reaches 408,000 youngsters across Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania.
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Jasvindar Sanghera 2007
Jasvinder Sanghera campaigns for the rights of victims of forced marriage, domestic violence and honour killings. As a result of her charity, Karma Nirvana, she has provided support to many women unable to help themselves- often putting her herself at risk. Jasvinder works regularly with the British Transport Police and is a regular contributor to official think tanks and organisations concerned with integration and the growing crimes against individual freedoms. She refused her own forced marriage and broke the silence by sharing her experience, and the experiences of her six older sisters, who were all taken to India to marry and then trapped in abusive and oppressive relationships. It is her belief and courage that has opened a window of opportunity to those in need.




Tabitha Khumalo 2006
Campaigns vociferously for basic human needs for the women of Zimbabwe at great danger to herself.
Claire Bertschinger 2005
Red Cross nurse who inspired Bob Geldof to do LiveAid in 1985 raising the international awareness of the Ethopian famine

Mary Blewitt 2004
A survivor of the Rwandan genocide, who has worked tirelessly to care for other survivors.
Charlotte di Vita 2003
Founded Trade Plus Aid in 1992, which is now involved in 12 countries in the third world. The organisation helps deprived communities to become self-sufficient by funding new markets for their traditional crafts.


Irene Khan 2002
Secretary General of Amnesty International. The first woman in its history to lead this influential human rights organisation that has over a million members in 140 countries.
Marie Calvin 2001
Sunday Times War Correspondent. Lost an eye from a burst of shrapnel in Sri Lanka. She reported on the troubles in Kosovo, Chechnya and East Timor and her team was captured by Tamil rebels.
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