American medal honours Stagecoach co-founder’s 30 years of charity work

Stagecoach co-founder Ann Gloag has been honoured with the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal in recognition of her charity work over the past 30 years.

The medal honours individuals and organisations that, through their work and actions, carry on the values that former US first lady Eleanor Roosevelt followed in her public life.

Mrs Gloag followed in the footsteps of previous recipients Hillary Clinton, Susan Sarandon, Christopher Reeve and Queen Noor of Jordan when she received the award in New York yesterday.

The award was given in recognition of her charity work, and more specifically for establishing the 2008 Freedom From Fistula Foundation, to help provide free medical care to some of the estimated two million women in Africa who have been injured in childbirth.

She said: “It is a huge privilege to have been chosen to receive the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal.

“I have been intimately involved in charitable projects for more than 30 years, but the last three years have been particularly focused on helping the forgotten women of Africa, women who have been seriously injured in childbirth, leaving them rejected by their families and outcasts in society. It is not a trendy or popular cause, and that is why it is so important.

“It is an injustice that millions of women have no access to proper maternity care.

“Through my Freedom From Fistula Foundation, we are working to help repair those already injured and prevent further cases occurring by providing quality maternity care.”