AN OUTSTANDING teenager and an animal welfare charity founder were among the winners of the 2009 Paphos Heart of Gold award.
Edie-May Turner Barling aged 17 years and Christine Panayiotou were presented their solid gold heart-shaped pins and award certificates by the Patron of the scheme, the Mayor of Paphos Savvas Vergas at a ceremony held at the Town Hall.
The nominees were also presented certificates in recognition of their courage, determination or community work from the Chairman of the municipality sports, youth and social welfare committee Panicos Charlambous, and Paphos councillors, Polys Polydorou, ChrIsanthos Savvides, Katerina Charalambidou and Maria Zavrou.
The ceremony took place on Friday night in front of a packed audience made up of nominees and their families, previous recipients, nominators and officials.
Edie–May helped raise funds to send Jasmitha Marharajasingh, who was six years old at the time, for life saving treatment in Israel and looked after her grandmother before she died. She was described as having an outstanding kind and caring nature and as a young girl who ‘always puts others before herself.’
Christine Panayiotou has dedicated the last 25 years of her life to saving animals and helping to change attitudes to animal care in Cyprus. She dedicated her award to all of her fellow animal lovers at Pafiakos and CCP animal welfare.
Emotions ran high as one of the nominees for the junior hearts of gold award Andreas Christafides, who is suffering from a rare disease called Angel Man syndrome, walked down the aisle to collect his certificate. His mother told the Cyprus Mail that after years of physiotherapy, the young boy had just learnt how to take his first steps.
Marcus Theodosiou who is also four, looked well and happy despite undergoing treatment for Leukaemia. The brave little boy was accompanied by his parents and his nominator.
The members of the judging panel pointed out that the decision of who to give the award to in each section was ‘extremely difficult’ and stressed that all the nominees were winners.
Young Jasmitha Marharajasingh, the recipient of last year’s junior heart of gold award was presented by a bouquet of flowers by the mayor, who was eager to meet the ‘Angel of Cyprus’ as she is known by doctors in Israel. The 9-year-old girl was unable to collect her award last year as she had been receiving treatment for a brain tumour and was undergoing gruelling procedures including a heart operation at the time of last year’s award.
There were many worthy nominations in the adult section and eighteen people were awarded certificates to thank them for being outstanding members of the community of Paphos.
The nominees included, Ben Hinton who overpowered a bank robber and saved the life of the manageress of the Tomb of the Kings Branch of the Hellenic Bank, Christine Jackson, herself a cancer patient, has raised over €40,000 for the Friends Hospice of Paphos, and Gina Ghillyer and Lousie Van Roijj have done much to raise the awareness of breast cancer, and started a pioneering SMS service called the sunflower campaign.
