Fahma is one of our youngest-ever award winners. She was just 17 when she was given the Young Campaigner of the Year Award in 2014 in recognition of her remarkable efforts to highlight and ban the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). A petition she started as a schoolgirl collected over 240,000 signatures and was supported by Nobel prize wi…

Life for someone with disabilities is challenging wherever you live, but even more so if that’s in the developing world. As our 2010 Window on the World award winner discovered when she was living and working in Tanzania. Seeing people with disabilities begging on the streets, Susie put her degree in textiles to use and set up a social enterprise t…

Many of our award winners say that it felt like a dream being a winner. None, though, have been chosen to be the recipient because of a dream! But that’s how Nina, the winner of the Women of the Year 2008 Outstanding Achievement Award says she came up with the idea of launching the first Moonwalk, a night time marathon walk through the streets of L…

Since winning the Women of the Year, Window on the World Award in 2007 in recognition of her unwavering campaigning for the rights of victims of forced marriage, domestic violence and honour killings, Jasvinder has been awarded a CBE and was made a Dame in the King’s Birthday Honours list this year. It’s all a far cry from her strict upbringing and…

Working as a young nurse in a remote feeding station in famine-torn Ethiopia, and facing the impossible daily decision of which of the thousands of starving children to save, Claire, the winner of the 2005 Women of the Year Window on the World Award, never imagined the impact the interview she gave to BBC reporter Michael Buerk would have. Becoming…

To mark the 70th anniversary of Women of the Year, in this series we’re talking to some of the extraordinary ordinary women whose exceptional achievements, courage and legacy (or, indeed, all three) have been recognised with special awards at the event over the decades. They talk about why they were chosen as award winners, recall their memories of…

Saying that this episode's guest holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon run dressed as a nut, doesn’t even begin to do justice to the absurd number of ridiculously difficult physical challenges that former Major in the Royal Army Medical Core, Sally Orange, has undertaken in her on-going quest to raise awareness of mental health i…

Our guest today is Hasina Rahman, a young woman whose unwavering determination and courage led her to embark on a transformative martial arts journey starting when she was a teenager. Her story is a testament to the power of self-belief, resilience, and passion. Hasina founded Pink Diamond Martial Arts in 2015 in Luton. The idea had come to her whi…

If you’ve ever considered making a career pivot, we can pretty much guarantee it wouldn’t be quite as life-changing as the one made by our guest on this episode of the Extraordinary Ordinary. When she decided to sign up for a fishing trip off the coast of Norfolk in 2012, Ashley Mullenger could never have imagined she would fall in love with being …

A 30 year career as an NHS nurse didn’t help Jo Tosh to piece together the strange symptoms she started to experience as being the first signs that she was suffering with Parkinsons Disease. But them why would she, she was only in her mid forties and Parkinson’s is an old persons disease isn’t it? It was one of the many lessons Jo has learnt in the…

Our guest today is Stacey Copeland, a trailblazer in the world of sports and a champion for gender equality in athletics. Stacey Copeland is not just an accomplished athlete; she's a history-maker. In 2018, she became the first British woman to win a Commonwealth title in boxing, a groundbreaking achievement that showcased her incredible skill and …

Our guest today is Gillian Millane, a mother whose life was forever changed by a heartbreaking event that captured the world's attention. In December 2018, a young woman named Grace Millane was traveling in New Zealand. What was meant to be an exciting adventure for the bubbly 21 year old turned into a nightmare that no family should ever have to g…

Karen has always been passionate about exploring the great outdoors. But when she was just 21 years old, she fell while climbing a sea cliff. The life-changing accident left her paralysed from the chest down. But she didn’t let that stop her from doing what she loved the most - going on adventures. She has since skied across icecaps, hand-cycled th…

Imelda Poole is a nun. But I can confidently say she's quite unlike any nun you've ever met. Because for the past 17 years, Imelda has been leading the fight against modern slavery in. Albania. She co-founded Mary Ward Loreto, an organisation which addresses the root causes of trafficking, rehabilitates victims and brings the perpetrators of slaver…

Sue Fish spent her entire career in the police, working her way up to Nottinghamshire chief constable. In a field dominated by men, Sue did radical work to champion women both in and out of the force. In 2016, she became the first chief constable to record misogyny as a hate crime. During her career, Sue saw the best of the police but also the wors…

Julie Siddiqi is someone who finds it impossible to stay silent when she sees injustice happening. She's a Muslim convert, a campaigner and a women's rights activist, with a list of accomplishments so long it would take a whole episode just to go through them all. Among them are the Open My Mosque campaign, which fights inequality in UK mosques, an…

May Parsons moved to the UK from the Philippines 19 years ago to continue her career as a nurse. And on the 8th of December 2020, she made history when she administered the world's first Coronavirus vaccine outside of clinical trials. May was then chosen to represent the NHS to receive the historic George Cross award from Her Late Majesty the Queen…

Kate Stanforth was on track to become a professional dancer until she became disabled as a teenager. She was diagnosed with a life-changing illness that means she often has to use a wheelchair. At some points, she thought she’d never dance again. But she’s used her passion to do some incredible things. Such as starting her own inclusive dance schoo…

Katrin McMillian is the founder of Hello World, which offers a remarkable solution to the challenge of delivering accessible, affordable education to communities in the developing world, through innovative solar powered, internet-enabled education Hubs, each built by the community, for the community, giving them education materials and internet acc…

A conversation with a homeless man about how he looked after his much loved dog, led Michelle, Southern, to launch a charity providing free veterinary care for the pets of homeless people. Street Paws looks after the animals and provides emergency housing for them if their owners have to go into hospital, it also supports hostels and trains their s…

Whilst she was teaching literacy in prisons Sharon Berry became increasingly dismayed by the damage their enforced separation caused the prisoners and their children. Her response was to create Storybook Dads, so that fathers could record themselves reading stories and sending messages to their children at home. From a small start in just one priso…

Her husband’s experience of being diagnosed with blood cancer is the driving force behind Sally Hurman’s determination to inform people about the illness and the need for them to sign up to the stem cell register. She uses her social media platform and a terrifying variety of death-defying stunts to raise both awareness and much need funds for rese…

When Ayesha Aslam was studying psychology and counselling she was struck by the lack of inclusion of spirituality or culture in the training. After much research she devised her own model of counselling, combining mainstream approaches with Islamic perspective, and launched Sakoon, the first, and now leading, provider of Islamic counselling service…

23 year old Lavinia Stennett is a writer, activist, and Founder and CEO of The Black Curriculum, a social enterprise working to both teach, and support the teaching of, Black history in schools, with the aim of empowering all students with a sense of identity and belonging. Lavinia vividly describes the feeling of otherness that she grew up with, a…

Sara Ward joined Black Country Women’s Aid over 20 years ago, and has transformed the independent charity, which supports victims of abuse and exploitation, in the West Midlands from a small refuge provider, to a dynamic regional crisis centre. Sara oversees the provision of support to over 8000 victims of abuse each year. In this powerful episode,…

Sylvia Mac overcame an appalling trauma as a young child to become a vocal supporter of, and dedicated campaigner for, people living with disfigurement. After a lifetime of agonising about what she saw as her ugly body, a moment of revelation changed her mindset and her attitude and she launched herself into creating an organisation she calls Love …