Mama Tina

Book excerpt: A blonde Irish woman sits in an ice-cream parlour on Le Loi Street singing, a crowd of Vietnamese street children around her, their eyes riveted on her smiling face... Christina Noble knows the pain and loneliness of being left outside the door - of having no door of one's own to walk through, for she was once a street-child herself, alone on the streets of Dublin. When she told the story of her early life in her bestselling autobiography Bridge Across My Sorrows she had no idea that it would prove a catalyst for so many others who had suffered childhood pain and rejection, or that it would inspire them to take the first courageous steps towards self-acceptance and their own self-healing. In 1989, driven by a dream and by the memory of her own past, she travelled 6,000 miles to Vietnam, a country of great beauty where war has left a terrible legacy. Against extraordinary odds she opened the Christina Noble Children's Foundation, a haven of food, beds, medical aid and schooling where the street children of Saigon can find safety and new beginnings under the protection of 'Mama Tina'. In this vivid and moving book Christina's compelling story continues with the amazing tale of what she and her Foundation have achieved. She takes us from the streets of Saigon to the Children's Prisons of Mongolia. A staunch campaigner for children's rights, for her there are no frontiers, only a world filled with children reaching out. Finally she returns to Dublin, where the former street orphan is officially and proudly greeted by the President of Ireland herself.