{"id":65119,"date":"2023-06-30T10:13:19","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T10:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=65119"},"modified":"2023-06-30T10:13:19","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T10:13:19","slug":"bauchi-girl-office-cleaner-and-now-cheshire-woman-of-the-year-in-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=65119","title":{"rendered":"Bauchi girl, office cleaner and now \u2018Cheshire Woman Of The Year\u2019\u00a0in UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

United Kingdom based Nigerian woman, Ije McDougall, daughter of a renowned PR Consultant and author, Dr Andee Iheme, has won the \u2018Cheshire Woman of the Year\u2019 2023 for touching the lives of the less privileged in Nigeria and the UK.<\/p>\n

Speaking with Journalists in a WhatsApp video interview in Bauchi, Ije McDougall expressed shock at her nomination pointing out that when she was nominated for the prestigious award, she doubted because \u201cthere was no way I could have been nominated, let alone win the award.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she she was nominated along with other White Women who are doing great things in their various fields of endeavours.<\/p>\n

Ije McDougall, who is a Human Resource Professional said: \u201cI don\u2019t know who nominated me and for what reason. But I got a letter through the post stating I had been nominated for the \u2018Cheshire Woman of the Year\u2019 award.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was a scam. When I got a letter that I was nominated for this award, I felt somebody was trying to pull my legs because \u2018Cheshire Woman of the Year\u2019 is too big. There\u2019s no way I would even be acknowledged. So, I just thought, okay, I will go to the event. It would be a nice day. I\u2019ll get to meet other women who are doing great things,\u201d She added.<\/p>\n

According to her: \u201cBefore I received the letter, I saw a lady on Facebook celebrating that she had received a nomination for \u2018Cheshire Woman of the Year\u2019 and I was so excited for her because she\u2019s a scientist and she creates all these products that help with pain relief and all that. So, I thought, \u2018of course, she\u2019s going to win. I can\u2019t think of a better person to win the award.\u2019<\/p>\n

An elated Ije McDogall added that \u201cwhen I eventually received the letter of nomination in the post, I thought, \u2018they\u2019re putting me in the same category as that woman. \u2018It\u2019s impossible. I don\u2019t stand the chance.\u2019 I thought to myself. But then, I went for the awards and they started to read out the person that has won because there\u2019s only one winner of the \u2018Cheshire Woman of the Year Award\u2019 each year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ije McDougall, who was born in Bauchi of an Igbo father from Imo State and a Yoruba woman from Kogi State added: \u201cLet me give you some context about Cheshire. Cheshire is a very big County. Like everywhere, Cheshire has some poor parts, some rich parts but it\u2019s a big County where there are a lot of people doing big things. We even have real housewives of Cheshire. That\u2019s to give you an understanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, the caliber of women in the room and the kind of work that they do, the kind of things they have achieved, and then there\u2019s me, little Bauchi girl from Nigeria in the same room with these people.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to her, it was during the award ceremony that she found out that she was nominated for helping a poor, sick and hungry woman and her children, for providing shelter to a homeless family and for many other charity works she\u2019s been doing in the UK and in Nigeria.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when they started to read out the nomination, they mentioned two examples; they said my name and I just started crying, but they gave two examples of things that I did,\u201d She added.<\/p>\n

The award winner also said that \u201cwhen they started reading the examples, it made me really emotional because the main thing that I was nominated for are things I didn\u2019t remember. I had forgotten about some of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to her, \u201cthey said that there was a lady I put on Facebook who\u2019s in the hospital and didn\u2019t have food for her and her children and I just got people on Facebook to donate food so we can fill up her cupboards and that\u2019s just me, that\u2019s just what I do because if somebody is hungry, you feed them.\u201d<\/p>\n

She further said that, \u201cThey gave another example that I found some housing and furniture for a homeless family. This is something that again, I didn\u2019t do myself, I asked people for help and people gathered to help. So, I didn\u2019t think I should be getting the credit. They said those were the main things that I was doing within the community that got their attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to her, \u201cThen, they decided to look into me further and they started to see they Khairos Initiative that I set up, the work I do there. They started to see my personal story, things I\u2019ve had to cope with, things I\u2019ve fought against, then they started to look at my career and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ije McDogall stressed that, \u201d I\u2019m a HR Professional within the civil service but I started as a messenger. When I first moved to the UK, I thought I\u2019d just come and go into a job but that was not my story, I struggled to get a job. So, I started as a cleaner, at this point, I had no confidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though I had my degree and all that, I still had no confidence. So, I started from the very bottom as a messenger\u00a0and I sort of climbed up the ladder and got all the qualifications. These were all the things that they looked into and how they decided that I should be given the award. Nobody is more shocked than me about this award.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
‘Bauchi Girl’, Ije McDogall, after her award ceremony.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Speaking on what the award means to her, she said it was a compensation for all she had gone through while growing up and her early years in the UK and also a call for her to do more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I live in the UK, is not like London, I live very near Liverpool but I don\u2019t live in Liverpool. So, where I live, is not very racially diverse, you don\u2019t see many black people there which means, the few of us black people here are very visible, we cannot hide. Wherever you go, you\u2019re likely to be the only black person there for a while, it\u2019s not very diverse, so we\u2019re visible,\u201d She stressed.<\/p>\n

According to her, \u201d It then means that for this award, I\u2019m visible for the right reasons, it means that people are seeing me whether I like it or not but they see me for the right reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also said that, \u201cThis award also means that all those struggles, all the times I\u2019ve been doubting myself, all the times I\u2019ve been wondering if I\u2019m doing the right thing, all the times that I was down and out but refusing to give up, the award has made all these worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She concluded saying that, \u201cThe award means I should continue, it means it\u2019s not the end of the journey and that I should continue. It means I now have a platform that I can use to do even more work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u25aa\ufe0e Culled from Global Update Newspaper.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

United Kingdom based Nigerian woman, Ije McDougall, daughter of a renowned PR Consultant and author, Dr Andee Iheme, has won the \u2018Cheshire Woman of the Year\u2019 2023 for touching the lives of the less privileged in Nigeria and the UK. Speaking with Journalists in a WhatsApp video interview in Bauchi, Ije McDougall expressed shock at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":65121,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5777],"tags":[837,6004,6005],"class_list":["post-65119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-features","tag-bauchi","tag-cheshire","tag-ije"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/65121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}