Fiona hailed as Great Scots’ Unsung Hero
A mum-of-two from North Connel, who raised thousands to ship medical supplies to Yazidi refugees in Iraq, has won a Great Scot Award.
Fiona Bennett was one of five Scots honoured with an Unsung Hero award on Saturday, given to those who go ‘the extra mile every day but never ask for recognition or reward’.
‘The former psychiatric nurse was so horrified by the public gang rape of a nine-year-old Yazidi girl by Daesh that she helped amass more than £300,000 of medical supplies for the people of Iraq,’ the Great Scot Award website explained.
‘Fiona felt compelled to do something to help after the terror group began attacking Yazidis in 2014, forcing them from their homes in parts of northern Iraq.
‘From her home 3,500 miles away, the mum-of-two sourced feeding tubes, needles, medical gloves, disinfectant wipes and other medical supplies to help the victims.
‘Fiona collected enough to fill eight shipping containers and launched a Facebook appeal to raise the £14,000 shipping fees. The equipment arrived at the hospital in Sinjar and is making life a whole lot better for the refugees being treated there.’
Fiona, a human resources manager in Oban, jumped out of a plane with her friend Faith Orr to help raise the money. She also works with Yazda, a global Yazidi aid organisation, and last year arranged for UN ambassador Nadia Murad, a Yazidi human rights activist who survived sexual slavery by ISIS, to visit the UK for the first time. This year Nadia won the Nobel Peace Prize for campaigning against rape in warfare.
Fiona said her unsung hero award ‘feels bittersweet, because I am being recognised for something that nobody should be recognised for’.
But it is raising awareness, she added, and it is leading to an interview on BBC Radio Scotland’s Kaye Adams show this week. ‘Hopefully, people listening will go away and Google it and maybe donate,’ she said.
The evening also led to a meeting with Unicef UK’s vice-president, Lord Jack McConnell, a former First Minister of Scotland, who could help Fiona visit Iraq. ‘I will be pushing for help from Unicef,’ Fiona said.
‘I want to meet the hospital staff. I want to see if the donations have been of any use, more information about what they need, what I can do to help. Can you imagine how much time I have thought about the Yazidis - people who four years ago I had never heard of? I am thinking about them constantly. I want to see it for myself, to meet the people.’
The award, she said, will sit in the toilet, ‘so everybody sees it’.
The night’s other unsung heroes included the founder of Missing People Scotland Angie Sivagnanasundaram, who helped reunite more than 3,000 people with their lost loved ones, and 82-year-old Jim White, secretary of the Wayside Club in Glasgow, which feeds 100 homeless people every night.