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  4. Humanitarian award for Olivia Giles

Humanitarian award for Olivia Giles

23rd January 2015

Olivia Giles, the Edinburgh lawyer who set up a charity to provide people in developing countries with prosthetic limbs after losing her own hands and feet due to serious illness, has been named as the winner of a global humanitarian award.

Ms Giles, who was made an OBE in 2010 for charitable services, was presented with the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award for 2015 at a special ceremony at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway by Europe and International Development Minister Humza Yousaf.

Launched in 2002, the award recognises those who have saved, improved or enriched the lives of others or society as a whole, through personal self-sacrifice, selfless service or direct humanitarian work.

Formerly a high flying commercial property lawyer, Ms Giles was struck down by meningitis the same year and her life was only saved at the expense of her hands and feet being amputated.

She responded by beginning to raise money and awareness for the Meningitis Trust and other charities. After learning about the difficulties – including ostracism – experienced by amputees in developing countries, she founding her own charity, 500 miles, to support the development and delivery of prosthetic and orthotic services to people with impaired mobility in Malawi, Zambia and Zanzibar.

It now has two centres in Malawi, which provide more than 1,650 devices each year to needy patients, and funds and subsidises devices for people in Zanzibar and Zambia. 

Her current project is The BIG Dinner on 7 March 2015, when she aims to raise £500,000 on one night with hundreds of dinners held in homes and restaurants across the country and donations being pledged: see Journal, January 2015, 35.

Describing herself as "shocked and overwhelmed" to receive the award, Ms Giles commented: "I consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to help out the people we work with and firmly believe that I got my second chance so I could help others get theirs.

“It’s impossible to describe how it feels when you see a young girl walk for the first time thanks to a prosthetic leg we’ve provided or to hear that men who had to depend on family and friends to get around are regaining some form of independence because they are now mobile. It really means the world and I’m very privileged to be part of that.

“As a proud Scotswoman, it’s a tremendous honour to receive the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award and I will continue to do all I can to live up to his beliefs of treating everyone as equals and working towards a fair and just society throughout the world.”

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