In Conclusion, Here is a LIst of Some of the Most Incredible Women From Recent HIstory:

These women all share something in common: Ordinary faces and beautiful hearts. They are not supermodels, by any means, but because of who they were (and are) inwardly, and the honorable, self-sacrificing, courageous ways in which they have changed our world for the better, make them commemorable, heroic and praiseworthy.

Proverbs 31:30 says, "Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised."

Adi Roche

Adi Roche is the founder and International Executive Director of the Chernobyl Children's Project International and has labored since 1990 to provide ongoing care for orphaned and genetically damaged children in Belarus, Western Russia and the Ukraine. Under Adi's direction, over $60 million has been delivered to the areas most impacted by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, and 12,000 children who were living in contaminated regions have been brought to Ireland where they are provided with much needed medical care and recuperation.

Aletta Jacobs

Aletta Jacobs, born in 1854, was a pioneering physician and women's rights activist who fought against legalized prostitution. She was the first woman to receive a medical degree in the Netherlands. In 1880, Aletta used rooms in the Union building to provide classes for women on hygiene and infant care. Through this experience she was compelled to run a free clinic for destitute women and children, and she ran this free clinic until her retirement from practice. In 1903, she became the leader of the Dutch Association for Woman's Suffrage and in 1915, she assisted the introduction of the Hague Congress which led to the formation of the Women's International League for Peace (WILPF), the world's oldest women's peace organization.

Dame Cecely Saunders

Dame Cecely Saunders, born in 1918, was the founder of the first modern hospice, St. Christopher's, which she opened in London, England, in 1967. As a nurse, a social worker and then a physician, she instigated what has become a worldwide movement providing diverse, holistic approaches to caregiving for the terminally-ill, with great emphasis on improved methods of pain control; and especially, what is now known as palliative care. Dame Cecely became a doctor in 1957, making her the first physician to devote her entire career to the care of dying patients. The "Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize" (the world's largest humanitarian award), was awarded to St. Christopher's Hospice in 2001. Dame Cecely told her patients, "You matter because you are you, and you matter to the last moment of your life."

Ann Armstrong-Dailey

When an anguished friend phoned Ann Armstrong-Dailey, asking if she knew where she could find hospice care for her terminally-ill son, Ann discovered that hospice care for children was largely unavailable. As a result, she was inspired to open the Children's Hospice International, a clearing-house organization which for the past twenty years has been providing research information, support groups, and education and training programs to serve children's hospices across the country. Ann's organization also provides assistance to hospice programs in more than 47 countries throughout the world.

Clara Hale

Clara Hale, born in 1905 and best known as "Mother Hale" was the founder of Hale House, a home for children whose mothers are addicted to drugs. Widowed in 1933, Clara greatly struggled to support her two young children during the Great Depression and took a job as a babysitter. Wanting to help other parents with similar struggles, she opened her home as a day care. She later became a licensed foster mother and for the next twenty-five years cared for more than forty children. In the early seventies, when drug abuse grew out of control in her Harlem community, she opened her home to infants of drug-addicted mothers. Clara's five-bedroom apartment became so overcrowded that she purchased a larger building and officially named it Hale House: The first known program in the United States for drug-addicted infants. She devoted the rest of her life to the care of more than five hundred children. When Clara died in 1992, her daughter, Lorraine, Ph.D., carried on her work and the house is still in operation today.

Corrie ten Boom

Corrie ten Boom, born in 1892, was a Dutch Watchmaker and Holocaust Survivor, who, in 1942, with her family, risked their lives taking in refugees and Jews and hiding them in their home. They built a secret room behind a wall in one of their bedrooms to hide the Jews during Nazi inspections. In 1944, the entire ten Boom family was arrested after a Dutch Informant told the Germans of their operation. The were first sent to prison, where Corrie's father died, and then Corrie and her sister, Betsie, were moved together to a concentration camps, finally landing in Ravensbruck, where Betsie died. It was through an eventual clerical error that Corrie was released; the remaining women prisoners her age were murdered only one week later. Corrie returned to the Netherlands after the war where she set up rehabilitation centres for WWII survivors, and in 1967, she was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel. In recognition of her courageous work during the war, Corrie was knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands, and in the Dutch city of Haarlem, there is a museum dedicated to the ten Boom family. Corrie is best known for her autobiography, "The Hiding Place."

Gloria WilderBrathwaite

Gloria WilderBrathwaite first earned her bachelor of science degree from Howard University and by 1993, she received her Doctor of Medicine degree from Georgetown University. In 1998, she completed her Fellowship in Community Pediatrics and Child Advocacy, and her Master's of Public Health. Gloria is the medical director of The D.C. Children's Health Project in Washington, a "clinic on wheels" which provides health care to children in some of the most dangerous and impoverished areas of the city, where infant mortality rates and teen pregnancy are twice that of the national average. Gloria and her clinic (built inside a long, blue van), journey to different neighborhoods every week, five days a week, providing health care to more than 3,500 families a year. Some forty percent of Gloria's patients have no health insurance and are seen free of charge. The rest are covered by Medicaid.

Edith Cavell

Edith Cavell, born in 1865, was a British nurse and humanitarian during World War I. She bravely helped hundreds of Allied soldiers escape from Belgium to the Netherlands, which was in violation of military law. In 1915, she was arrested for "harbouring Allied soldiers." She was jailed for ten weeks, the final two weeks in solitary confinement. Edith was then executed by a firing squad in the middle of the night, October 12th. The evening before her excecution, she told the Anglican chaplain, Reverend Father Gahan, that "Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." These very words are now inscribed on her statue which is located in Saint Martin's Place, in London, England. There are many memorials and statues commemorating Edith all around the world.

Elizabeth Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell, born in 1821, was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. She was also an abolitionist and women's rights activist. American hospitals refused to hire her, so Elizabeth went to Paris, France to train at La Maternité. Unfortunately, while there, she caught an eye infection from an infant, and lost her eye, replacing it with a glass eye. In 1852, she opened a dispensary in the slums of New York City and was later joined by her sister Emily, and Dr. Marie Zakrzewska. Together, they ran an infirmary (small hospital) which they named the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children ("Indigent" meaning destitute or impoverished). During this time, Elizabeth adopted a daughter, a seven-year-old Irish Immigrant named Katherine, from an orphange on Randall's Island. In 1869, Elizabeth carried out a plan she had forumlated with Florence Nightingale, and with her sister Emily, also a physician, opened the Women's Medical College at the Infirmary. She later founded the London School of Medicine for Women.

Elizabeth Glaser

Elizabeth Glaser, born in 1947, co-founded the Pediatrics AIDS Foundation after her daughter, Ariel, died of AIDS in 1988. In 1981, Elizabeth contracted HIV unknowingly through a blood transfusion after Ariel was born. Ariel contracted the virus through her mother's breastmilk, but it wasn't until several years later, when Ariel's health declined, that it was discovered that Elizabeth, Ariel, and her one-year-old son, Jake, all had HIV. Ariel died of advanced AIDS because the only effective drug approved by the FDA, was for adults, not children. The medicines that later saved Jake's life, came too late for Elizabeth, however, and she died in 1994. The Pediatrics AIDS Foundation is credited with the requirement that drug firms test all new medicines in children; the preventative measures which have cut the number of pediatric AIDS cases in the United States by nearly 90% since 1992; the creation of a global program, "Call to Action," to extend that achievement to 17 countries overseas; and direct funding for HIV/AIDS researchers.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman, was born into slavery in a Maryland plantation in 1820. In 1849, she escaped and went to Philidelphia, but quickly returned to Maryland to rescue her family. One group at a time, she brought her relatives out of state, and through the course of thirteen missions, rescued more than seventy slaves through the secret routes and safe houses of what is now known as the "Underground Railroad." Harriet traveled secretly by night and became known as the "Moses of Her People." During the American Civil War, Harriet worked as a Union spy and guided the raid on the Combahee River, resulting in the liberation of more than seven hundred slaves. Many years later, Harriet opened a home for the elderly in upstate New York, called The Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People in Auburn. It is now a museum. Despite endless hardships and poverty, Harriet dedicated her life to the saving of others.

Mother Teresa, born in 1910, was a Roman Catholic nun with Indian citizenship. She founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India, in 1950, and for more than forty five years lovingly cared for the impoverished, the oprhaned, and the sick and dying. By the 1970s, she had become famous internationally as an advocate for the needy and in 1979, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1980, she was awarded India's highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna. By the time she died in 1997, her Missionaries of Charity foundation had spread to 123 countries, operating some 610 missions, including homes and hospices for those with tuberculosis, leprosy, and HIV/AIDS, family and children's counselling programs, soup kitchens, schools, and orphanages. During the Seige of Beirut, Mother Teresa brokered a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas, so that she, accompanied by Red Cross workers, could travel through the war zone to rescue 37 children who were trapped in a front line hospital.

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES:

How to Manage a Food Addiction

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