Inspiring female charity leaders set to be honoured with statues

30 Aug 2018 News

Millicent Fawcett's statue, unveiled in April 2018 in Parliament Square, is one of few statues depicting women

Women from the charity sector are among those who will have small statues made of them, as part of a campaign that aims to double the number of statues of women in England.

Put Her Forward, which aims to recognise living women who have positively impacted the people around them, is a work by the artist collective None Zero One. It was commissioned by Heritage Open Days, which is run by the National Trust.

Nominations were gathered from the public, with the 25 figures of women to be unveiled during the weekends of 6-9 and 13-16 September 2018. Each statue is a foot tall.

One of women from charities and community groups is Ruth Ibegbuna, who founded RECLAIM, a Manchester-based charity supporting young working class people into leadership positions.

Taban Shoresh has also been nominated. A genocide survivor, Shoresh founded The Lotus Flower, a non-profit organisation that currently works with survivors of conflict in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq. The Lotus Flower strives to give vulnerable girls and women a future, improving their economic, social and cultural chances in life, and has helped over 2,000 women and girls to date. 

Other nominees include Dr Leyla Hussein, a psychotherapist who has provided support for survivors of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) for over 15 years. This has included founding the Dahlia Project, and co-founding Daughters of Eve, as well as becoming chief executive of Hawa’s Haven and spearheading the End FGM European Campaign.

Emma Back, founder of the Winchester Fit for the Future project and chief executive of the Winchester Sport, Art and Leisure Trust (SALT), and Chrisann Jarrett, who founded Let Us Learn in 2014, a national movement campaigning for the rights of young migrants to access education, were also both nominated.

The Put Her Forward campaign says: “There are 925 public statues in the UK. 158 of these are women, and of these only 25 are of non-mythical, non-royal women.

“There are more statues of people called John. There are more statues of goats. With your nominations we aim to double the statues of non-mythical, non-royal women in England by September 2018.”

The full list of nominated women can be seen here.

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