‘Angel of Saigon’ receives OBE for her work

CHRISTINA NOBLE, the “Angel of Saigon”, was honoured yesterday by the Prince of Wales for her work with the street children of Vietnam.

Receiving an OBE at Buckingham Palace, she said: "I feel in my heart that this is a kind of world recognition for the children all those years have been worth it."

The Dublin woman, who has dedicated her life to alleviating poverty, herself overcame destitution and abuse. She is driven by the belief that no child should suffer as she did on the brutal streets of Dublin's slums. At the age of 10, she struggled to keep her seven brothers and sisters after their mother died and their father, a brain-damaged boxer, descended to chronic alcoholism.

"I didn't want to be a victim, I wanted to be a survivor a successful survivor," she said.

In 1989, acting on a vivid and distressing dream, Ms Noble decided to travel to Vietnam.

"I didn't know what I would find or what I would do, but I just had to go. I ain't no saint, I'm just an ordinary person. I go anywhere my heart can sing and my soul dance."

Now, more than 100,000 street children in Vietnam and Mongolia have past through her caring hands.

In many ways, conditions in the former Soviet republic are worse than in war-ravaged Vietnam.

"It's really bad there kids are starving and living down manholes and in the sewers," she said.

To help finance Christina's work call the CNFC office at [phone].