Mayo’s Most Inspirational Woman marked by compassion

Mayo’s Most Inspirational Woman of the Year for 2016, Margaret Leahy from Garrymore, is pictured with her award.

Ciara Galvin

THE second annual ‘Nollaig na mBan’ (Women’s Little Christmas) event attracted a large gathering of inspirational women to the Breaffy House Resort last Wednesday.
Among them was Margaret Leahy, the Garrymore woman who was named as Mayo’s Most Inspirational Woman for 2016.
The event, which is run as a fundraiser for the Mayo Rape Crisis Centre, was held for the first time last year with the aim to honour the county’s inspirational women.
Margaret was nominated by her friend and subsequently by her two daughters for the manner in which she dealt with the passing of her late husband, John McWalter.
Margaret has not only cared for her own family since becoming a widow but continues to help others experiencing the same situation, in a widow’s online forum.
“Widows can be left with a farm knowing nothing about farming, and needing to know practical stuff like probate. The comments about Margaret were very moving. She is very compassionate to people,” said Loretta McDonagh, Acting Director of the Mayo Rape Crisis Centre.
Loretta said the whole event was about ‘recapturing the age old tradition of Nollaig na mBan’ and was a chance to ‘bring inspirational women together, nominated or not’.
“It is also about showing the work of the Mayo Rape Crisis Centre and bringing about a new level of awareness about sexual violence in our community,” she said.
In her speech on the night, the Acting Director told those gathered the important work done by the centre in offering free confidential support, counselling, advocacy, and information service to anyone whose life has been affected at any time by sexual violence.

Fundraising committee
Loretta paid tribute to the ‘outstanding and inspirational fundraising committee’ of Therese O’Grady, who with husband Paul runs Sports Clinic West, which sponsored the awards; Caroline Wilson, Charmaine Colvin, Carmel Kelly, Ruth MacNeely and lead organiser Yvonne Kilcullen.
The nominated inspirational women on the night were: Carmel Burke, former support worker with Mayo Women’s Support Services; Fiona Neary, one of the founders of the Mayo Rape Crisis Centre and the Rape Crisis Network Ireland, and Elaine Griffin, artist/singer and songwriter and long time awareness campaigner of Lyme Disease; and the overall winner Margaret Leahy.
Guest speaker on the night was writer Kate Kerrigan and MC was 2015 Most Inspirational Woman in Mayo, Martina Jennings.
At the awards, Loretta McDonagh also noted that though the award was still in its infancy, it is a much needed fundraising opportunity for the centre, especially when the organisation has had to reduce its outreach services due to cutbacks to core funding from Tusla.
“This is a very difficult decision to make when our numbers tell us that demand for our service continues to increase. Outreach services are vital to communities in such a large rural county as Mayo, so reducing them at time when in reality we should be increasing them is a tough place to be as a service provider,” Loretta told those in attendance.
Ms McDonagh said the night was also about honouring inspirational women who have walked through the door of the Mayo Rape Crisis Centre in the last 21 years.
“In particular I want to celebrate the younger women who have so courageously walked through that door in recent years,” she concluded.