The Extraordinary Ordinary, the podcast from Women of the Year

Nov 11 2024 26 ep. 33 mins 3
The Extraordinary Ordinary, the podcast from Women of the Year artwork

The Extraordinary Ordinary, from Women of the Year, shines a light on incredible achievements by women who you’ve probably never heard of (until now), but whose passion, dedication, and fierce determination has changed society, their communities and the world, in ways that will inspire and uplift you.

  Society & Culture  Education  Leisure
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S4 Ep6: Fahma Mohammed, the schoolgirl who challenged a shocking community tradition

Nov 11 2024 26 mins  
Fahma is one of our youngest-ever award winners. She was just 17 when she was given the Young Campaigner of the Year Award in 2014 in recognition of her remarkable efforts to highlight and ban the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). A petition she started as a schoolgirl collected over 240,000 signatures and was supported by Nobel prize winner Malala Yousefzai and then UN

S4 Ep7: Susie Hart, the creative activist who is changing attitudes towards disability

Nov 04 2024 31 mins  
Life for someone with disabilities is challenging wherever you live, but even more so if that’s in the developing world. As our 2010 Window on the World award winner discovered when she was living and working in Tanzania. Seeing people with disabilities begging on the streets, Susie put her degree in textiles to use and set up a social enterprise to provide crafts training and em

S4 Ep4: Nina Barough, the charity founder who walks with her decorated bra on show

Oct 28 2024 28 mins  
Many of our award winners say that it felt like a dream being a winner. None, though, have been chosen to be the recipient because of a dream! But that’s how Nina, the winner of the Women of the Year 2008 Outstanding Achievement Award says she came up with the idea of launching the first Moonwalk, a night time marathon walk through the streets of London to raise money for Breakth

S4 Ep3: Jasvinder Sanghera, the campaigner who gave up everything to escape an arranged marriage

Oct 21 2024 39 mins  
Since winning the Women of the Year, Window on the World Award in 2007 in recognition of her unwavering campaigning for the rights of victims of forced marriage, domestic violence and honour killings, Jasvinder has been awarded a CBE and was made a Dame in the King’s Birthday Honours list this year. It’s all a far cry from her strict upbringing and arranged marriage to a stra

S4 Ep2: Claire Bertschinger, the nurse who was the catalyst for a global cultural phenomenon

Oct 14 2024 30 mins  
Working as a young nurse in a remote feeding station in famine-torn Ethiopia, and facing the impossible daily decision of which of the thousands of starving children to save, Claire, the winner of the 2005 Women of the Year Window on the World Award, never imagined the impact the interview she gave to BBC reporter Michael Buerk would have. Becoming the trigger for the iconic Band A

S4 Ep1: Pam Warren, the rail crash survivor whose life changed forever

Oct 07 2024 28 mins  
To mark the 70th anniversary of Women of the Year, in this series we’re talking to some of the extraordinary ordinary women whose exceptional achievements, courage and legacy (or, indeed, all three) have been recognised with special awards at the event over the decades. They talk about why they were chosen as award winners, recall their memories of the day and share what’s happ

S3 Ep6: The Extraordinary Ordinary with adventurer and mental health campaigner Sally Orange

Nov 19 2023 37 mins  
Saying that this episode's guest holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon run dressed as a nut, doesn’t even begin to do justice to the absurd number of ridiculously difficult physical challenges that former Major in the Royal Army Medical Core, Sally Orange, has undertaken in her on-going quest to raise awareness of mental health issues. This is a woman who has

S3 Ep5: The Extraordinary Ordinary with Hasina Rahman

Nov 12 2023 21 mins  
Our guest today is Hasina Rahman, a young woman whose unwavering determination and courage led her to embark on a transformative martial arts journey starting when she was a teenager. Her story is a testament to the power of self-belief, resilience, and passion. Hasina founded Pink Diamond Martial Arts in 2015 in Luton. The idea had come to her while she was at home looking after

S3 Ep4: The Extraordinary Ordinary with fisherman Ashley Mullinger

Nov 05 2023 30 mins  
If you’ve ever considered making a career pivot, we can pretty much guarantee it wouldn’t be quite as life-changing as the one made by our guest on this episode of the Extraordinary Ordinary. When she decided to sign up for a fishing trip off the coast of Norfolk in 2012, Ashley Mullenger could never have imagined she would fall in love with being out at sea and fishing and t

S3 Ep3: The Extraordinary Ordinary with Parkinson's sufferer and advocate Jo Tosh

Oct 29 2023 28 mins  
A 30 year career as an NHS nurse didn’t help Jo Tosh to piece together the strange symptoms she started to experience as being the first signs that she was suffering with Parkinsons Disease. But them why would she, she was only in her mid forties and Parkinson’s is an old persons disease isn’t it? It was one of the many lessons Jo has learnt in the eight years since her d