Photo – Good causes: From left, British finalist Nick Eastcott, Grahame Maher Award organizer Jenny Maher, winner Frederique Kallen, of the Netherlands, and runner-up Sue van Schreven, of Queenstown, at the global awards in Qatar.
Queenstown’s Sue van Schreven narrowly missed out on a whopping 100,000 pound (NZ$201,000) prize for her charity in a global competition but she did bring home NZ $20,000 as runner-up.
The Queenstown based charity queen was selected as one of three finalists for the Grahame Maher Award and its 100,000 pound prize for the winning charity.
The founder of Orphans Aid International, formerly from Invercargill, had planned to use the winnings to expand her charity into Uganda, but she said yesterday that she was rapt with the 10,000 pound runner-up prize. “There are still 101 things we can do – there are so many needs. Hopefully we can multiply it out. Unfortunately we didn’t win the big one, but I had an incredible time. The lady who won is doing very similar work to us with street children in Peru.”
The Dutch winner, Frederique Kallen, Mrs van Schreven and British finalist Nick Eastcott were flown to Qatar for a week, courtesy of Vodafone New Zealand, to appear before the final judging panel. “It was very intense, it started the minute we got there. We did presentations and had to attend a big press conference with 20 or 30 cameras in the room. It was a beautiful place, quite stunning.”
Each of the finalists did a lengthy presentation on their charity and its work before the judges. They included the head of Vodafone, the Australian ambassador to Qatar and the widow of Grahame Maher, the former Vodafone chief executive who set up the World of Difference Awards, which ended up going global.
Mrs van Schreven won that award in 2005, which made her eligible along with heads of charities in 26 other countries, to be nominated for public voting in the Grahame Maher Award. “It was a year to the day since Grahame Maher died, so there was a lot of emotion, especially for his wife.”
Mrs van Schreven said she was extremely grateful to everyone who voted for her. She arrived home in Queenstown on Sunday night. Orphans Aid, which runs orphanages and programmes in Romania, Russia, India and Nepal, was still committed to a move into Uganda to help orphans or other aid programmes there.
“Without winning that top prize, we’ll just have to reassess how we approach that but we’re still very committed to that” she said.
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