Gurkha charity volunteer receives award from actress

A WOMAN from Caversham has been honoured for her services to the Gurkha community.

Pam Reynolds was presented with the Sir James Gildea Award by actress Joanna Lumley during a ceremony at the Wycliffe Church in Reading.

The award was created to recognise volunteers and employees of the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmen’s Families Association, which Sir James founded in 1885, for exceptional contribution and commitment.

Mrs Reynolds, who has volunteered for the charity since the early 2000s and was awarded a BEM in 2017, said she was “shocked and surprised” to be honoured again.

For the last 12 years she has run the Gurkha Ladies Project to help teach English to the wives of Gurkha veterans and help them integrate into British society.

Mrs Reynolds said she first noticed the women struggling to communicate while volunteering at the SSAFA offices in Reading during the aftermath of the Iraq War.

Many of the women, who are now in their Seventies and Eighties, could not even read or write in their own language, having not been to school in their native Nepal.

Mrs Reynolds, a former a psychology and biology teacher at Highdown School in Emmer Green, said: “I was overwhelmed by the turnout at our first session. I had only prepared for 10 students but about 60 came.

“Once the project got going, we had around 70 regulars at our Tuesday night sessions and 40 attending on Thursdays.

“Joanna has been a wonderful supporter of the project since the very beginning and has followed it every step of the way.

“I would also like to thank Reading Borough Council and Wycliffe Church, which helped the project expand by equipping us with proper desks and a projector.” Lumley, who has been a long-time supporter of the Gurkha veterans and campaigned for them to receive a full armed forces pension, said the project would not have been a success without Mrs Reynolds and her fellow volunteers.

“She so deserves awards,” she said. “She has worked very hard for many years to help huge numbers of Gurkha ladies.”

The ceremony was attended by some of Mrs Reynolds’s former students and fellow volunteers and there was a performance of a traditional Nepalese dances and songs by Gurkha women in costume.

Mrs Reynolds and her students helped to collate a cookery book called Kukri Kitchen Cookbook with Gurkha recipes. The book costs £10 with the proceeds going to the Gurkha Welfare Trust and SSAFA. Copies can be ordered by emailing Mrs Reynolds at pam.reynolds.ssafa@gmail.com

For more information about the charity, visit www.ssafa.org.uk