Now based on London, the jet setting volunteer spent most of her life involved with numerous humanitarian causes, working with community groups in socially deprived areas in Australia and around the world.
She has worked on large-scale advocacy projects and has independently raised more than $260,000 for charities and emergency relief appeals, including $41,000 for the Children’s Leukaemia and Cancer Research Foundation by shaving off her hair.
Ms White volunteered with the indigenous people of WA, facilitating a range of activities and long-term community projects and creating new programs, initiatives and cultural outlets for those people on a long-term basis.
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READ NOWIn 2001, Ms White was named Australian of the Year in WA for Community Service, became a Paul Harris Fellow at age 15, is a Queen’s Guide, a recipient of the Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award, the Red Cross Volunteer Medal, the Australian Humanitarian Award, and the Foundation for Young Australians Travel/Study Award.
She holds the Bronze Cross for lifesaving and raised funding for more than 300 wheelchairs for children in need around the world.
Her humanitarian work never ends. While on holiday in India in 2008, Ms White began a four-year project to build two hostels, one for a school for blind children and another for deaf and dumb children.
A third project was equipping a unique Vocational Training Centre to house educational classes, workshops and retail outlets for disabled young people, providing them with meaningful employment opportunities.
Ms White worked in Papua New Guinea for four years as project manager for the National Tuberculosis Program and is now doing research at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London University.