Oundle resident, Leonie McCarthy was awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours List for working in one of the most challenging jobs in Peterborough, helping local immigrants to start new lives of their own.

So what’s Leonie’s story? In the 1970’s when she was just 12 years old she already had strong ideals and after she witnessed some distressing racial abuse, she wanted to help. She was young then, and could do nothing for the boy she saw being beaten up in Kent. After school she trained in community theatre arts at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in London, and then started to work with youths and the unemployed.

She set up the British Red Cross Refugee Project in Peterborough, and now Leonie runs New Link Asylum and Migration Resource Centre, an award winning organisation which coordinates services for new arrivals. She manages a team of 14 staff, who since 2004, have helped over 6,000 people, including refugees, migrant workers, and asylum seekers of almost 100 nationalities, speaking 75 different languages. As part of her job, Leonie listens intensively to the concerns of new arrivals and eases them into the Peterborough workforce. Her role also involves helping and talking to people who have fled from scenes of sickening brutality far worse than what she saw in Kent all those years ago.

It’s a difficult line of business and yet Leonie says, “The city has a lot of agencies working together that really care about people living well together.” She also declares, “And the staff that work here at New Link are so passionate about the work they do. We have people from all over the world working together, and they all find that they have things in common.”

In a sense, the fact that people of all races from all over the world are working together, means that Leonie has achieved her goal of addressing racial differences. In 2006, Ms McCarthy was one of only 12 commissioners chosen to work on a government project to tackle integration and unity. Her work has involved rebuilding (or building) respect for diversity and forging solid and resilient communities, while responding to barriers to integration and tackling extremist ideologies.

On receiving the award, Leonie’s reaction was modest. “Being nominated for this award was a complete surprise and I believe it reflects the valuable contributions that my colleagues and others in partner organisations have made to this important work.”