Humanitarian aid worker who helped save the lives of children across the globe over an incredible 30-year career. 

Moved by the images of suffering, Sally Becker, an artist, set off to the war torn region of Bosnia determined to try and help.

 It was 1993 and the country was in the midst of a civil war. 

Sally began by taking aid to a hospital on the west side of the city which was under the control of the Bosnian Croats and was asked by a UN officer to get permission to evacuate a child from the besieged east side where 60,000 Bosnian Muslims were trapped. 

No one could get in or out and people were dying for want of the most basic medical supplies. With permission from the warring parties to rescue all the sick and injured children she drove an old Bedford ambulance across the front line and began ferrying sick and injured children and their families to safety.

In December 93 she returned to Britain to organise a convoy of 57 ambulances and trucks and she and her volunteers brought a million pounds of medical aid to all sides and evacuated 98 injured children and their families. Two months later she flew to central Bosnia to evacuate 28 injured Croat children and their families from a besieged monastery. 

Sally explained: “Looking back over the past three decades, I feel grateful to have been able to play a small part in helping to save children’s lives.

“The real inspiration though comes from the incredible resilience of the children and the families I’ve met and all those who have worked alongside me.

Sally has continued her work for 3 decades, helping children in Kosovo, Northern Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Gaza. She was shot by masked gunmen in Northern Albania and shortly after being diagnosed with breast cancer she survived an attack by ISIS militants in Mosul. 

In 2016 she founded Save a Child, a British charity dedicated to providing medical treatment for children in areas of conflict and later launched a mobile telemedicine programme connecting local doctors with a global network of paediatric specialists helping to save the lives of thousands of children in besieged and remote areas.

She says: “It means a doctor or nurse treating children in areas like Gaza can reach out and get expert help within an hour or two, which is often the difference between life and death. We have saved thousands of children in Afghanistan thanks to our pediatric experts in the UK and Sweden.”

What the Judges said: “Sally has made a difference to so many people’s lives it’s almost impossible to imagine the scale of her achievements. She is the kind of woman the word ‘inspiring’ was made for.”