INSPIRATIONAL Middlesbrough mum Georgie Hamari became a qualified social worker at 50 while changing university visual awareness policies, nursing a cancer-stricken husband and becoming Britain's first female blind chess champion along the way.
Yet this amazing lady, whose friends think nothing fazes her, was reduced to a gibbering wreck at interviews, even though she was armed with a CV that would knock spots off the competition.
"I was hopeless, partly because I was trying too hard, I always think I have to be twice as good as anyone else because of my disabilities but also because I was mithering about my clothes and my hair," explains Georgie, who is severely visually impaired and registered deaf.
"I was so bad at one interview that I honestly wouldn't have employed myself! I have so much to offer, but no one would give me the chance. I didn't know who to turn to."
Luckily, her Disability Employment Advisor did. She put Georgie in touch with Maureen Fraser of Shaw Trust, who offered Work Preparation and help honing interview skills. Maureen also put her in touch with Action for Blind People, who put Georgie's CV on the Internet. That drew an immediate work offer from Sight Services in Gateshead, which Georgie took even though it's a 90-mile round trip from her Middlesbrough home.
"Shaw Trust also bought me an interview suit, coat, bag and shoes, the lot. I feel like a million dollars in that suit. The first time I wore it, I didn't get the job, but I did get a letter saying they would welcome further applications from me. That's the first time anyone has ever said anything like that to me," adds Georgie.
"And the Trust continues to help me. They got me a mobile phone for personal safety, a computer so I can work at home and they're helping me to look for a job nearer home. I wouldn't be where I am today without them."
She has been working for the Gateshead and South Tyneside Sight Service for 18 months, setting up and facilitating social groups for elderly visually impaired people, and she enjoys it hugely.
"Sight Services are wonderful," adds Georgie. "They were the first organisation, other than the Trust, to see beyond the disability to the potential of me as an individual. In addition, the help and support I have received from my Line Manager Elaine Vernon as been invaluable."
But Georgie's driving ambition is to be a social worker, ideally working with elderly people in hospitals. "People in hospital are vulnerable, and the elderly even more so. I know what that feels like, after being in hospitals or institutions for most of my life," she says.
The eldest of four, Georgie was a boarder in a Liverpool school for the blind from the age of five. She went straight from school to an abusive marriage, and spent her days on autopilot 'getting up, watching telly, going to the blind society, watching telly, going to bed'.
When her daughter Lisa went away to college, Georgie decided it was time to do something for herself. She spent 12 years getting GCSEs, higher education qualifications and a diploma in social work. But just as she was ready for work, her second husband Andrew was diagnosed with cancer. Georgie combined caring for him, and studying at Teesside University for her degree in social work. Andrew, now in remission, was there for her graduation in 2001.
Of course she left her mark on the education world. One tutor will never forget her after she taught him exactly how impossible it was for her to work from an overhead projection onto a blackboard. "He just didn't get it, so I gave him my first assignment in Braille," she smiles. Many of the recommendations she made in her final dissertation, on visual awareness and education, have been taken up by Teesside, and other education authorities.
"I'd love to do a visual awareness programme for education authorities and social services," says Georgie, who has also given lectures to second year social work students. "But most of all I want to do what I am qualified for, to be a social worker.
"I am in control of my life now and I want to help other people to achieve that too".
