Breaking Barriers

Amanda Seyfried was on TV last night promoting her new film ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’… Ann Lee was a poor woman in eighteenth-century Manchester England who joined a sect known as ‘The Shakers’ for their ecstatic dancing and singing during worship.

In 1774, Lee and a small group of Shakers sailed from Liverpool to New York and set up a radical Shakers community, that taught gender parity, pacifism and celibacy. They pioneered social services in America, provided shelter to abused women, and freed enslaved African Americans…

Ann Lee broke religious and social barriers.

Tools with a Mission is a Christian charity that collects donated tools, refurbishes them and sends them in trade kits to the third world.

This month’s ‘TWAM’ magazine tells of Maria joining the carpentry programme in Kimisala, Zambia. She speaks of the challenges of being the only woman training for a traditionally masculine career: ‘I’m very happy to be an up-and-coming carpenter…. What a man can do I can also do’

Maria is breaking gender and cultural barriers.

The news reported on Darts world champion Deta Hedman. Coming to England from Jamaica when she was thirteen Deta’s played darts all her life. Nicknamed the ‘Caribbean Queen’, after five decades in the sport she finally won the world championship in December – aged sixty-six.

As a black woman in a sport usually associated with white men, she’s suffered racist abuse… We saw her receiving her OBE from Princess Ann for her services to darts and charity.

Deta has broken barriers of age and colour

I also learned about twelve-year-old Lucy Foyster, from Hethersett, near Norwich. Lucy was diagnosed with bone cancer at the age of seven… she started playing wheelchair tennis.

She was the youngest player in the Australian Open Juniors… Together with Japanese partner Seira Matsuoka, last week she became junior doubles champion on her Grand Slam debut.

Lucy has broken barriers of youth and disability.

Ann, Maria, Deta, Lucy… four very different women… determination, stamina… willing to be different… breaking barriers.