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A year has gone by and here we are again, with the same drive, on a festive occasion to award more Active Woman prizes.

This is the seventh edition of the prize and I can only wish that it could be biblically multiplied 70x7 and, even then, I am certain that the number of people willing to take part in such a deserving achievement, and take their place among those awarded with the prizes that were happily promoted by Active Woman, will never diminish.

After 7 years, let us just imagine the extraordinary large number of women who went through this experience.

The number of initial candidates, which I ignore but believe enormous, since I am becoming increasingly better acquainted with my countrywomen, is a number which the Committee of notable personages has the difficult task of filtering.

To arrive, tonight, at these 10 names, how many will have been left behind, possibly as deserving of the prizes as these are?

I can guess at an immense number of untiring workers in the so many and the so much required social works of which we are aware, and which always have the need of our generous help. I know they will not be less enthusiastic because this was not their winning occasion. Maybe next time...

The only thing I can imagine them doing is their mental arithmetic. Or, if you prefer, building castles in the air.

If I had won, I could have built another house this year, or promoted another kindergarten, another training centre; I could take more children to the beach when in the holiday camp, place more people on the site, and help more missionaries.

There are always many things to be done and for this reason we know that these women who are here today and that the many more who are away “have their hands full”, a popular saying which we all know of.

Dismay or “giving up” does not exist, because such are terms these ladies have erased from their vocabulary.

They have long been used to fighting.

The souls that give themselves to noble causes, such as those with us here, on this festive occasion, also know their sums.

Besides, if I have learnt anything, is that they do, they have to do, many sums, because the needs are many and arise daily, and the subsidies are small and do not fall from Heaven.

There is a small poem by my favourite poetess – Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen – which keeps me company since childhood. It is called “Lusitânia” and its four lines reflect a complete project of life.

Those that pluckily face the sea
And in it plunge as a sharp knife
The black bow of their boats
Live out of a little bread and moonlight

Life taught me that living poetically out of a little bread and moonlight is only for those who already have a bellyful of something more substantial.

The women of my country, who are with us here today and represent so many more who are not here but could also be, pluckily face the sea of lives that they know have more storms than lulls, and that with the black bows of their boats face the incurable disease, the social and family exclusion, the fragile life at risk, the hunger which is not satisfied with moonlight, break the barriers of silence, of indifference, of physical and mental incapacity.

And they know that the black bow of their boats of light have to reach a safe harbour.

The Active Woman Prizes are a precious help for these projects not to founder.

For this reason I repeat:

That they be multiplied 70x7.

And it will never be over-much to say: every day that passes I am prouder of the Women of my country.

And with the Active Woman Prizes I found out, as so many others also did, many more names of people and institutions that without them would be condemned to obscurity.

We unfortunately know that our times are not propitious to publicize what is really worth while.

The Active Woman prizes are really very worth while.

Thank you, prize givers and prize winners, for persevering.