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This is the very first time we award the Active Woman Prize on International Women’s Day, 8 March.

This festive night is usually held in May, a month which is also favourable for paying tribute to Women.

We, the women here tonight, may believe that the celebration of an International Women’s Day is no longer justified.

It was on 8 March 1857, in New York, that a group of female textile workers rebelled against the inhuman conditions under which they worked.

When we feel happier with the conquests achieved in the last 152 years in favour of the situation of the Woman in the World, maybe we should take note of the almost daily reports on victims of domestic violence which, in 2008 only, was responsible for the death of almost fifty women in Portugal, along with approximately seventy who suffered homicidal attempts which left them severely handicapped.

What joins us today is the award of a prize which rewards Portuguese women whose wish is to change the world into a place more deserving of being lived in by women and men of good will.

We are living a difficult time. A crisis is upon us, difficulties are felt everywhere, we face alarming numbers of unemployment and bankruptcy.

A short time ago, in a visit to the country, my husband made a statement which sounded very sensible:

“We are living a period in which we are going to need each other very much”.

The ten women we are paying tribute to today have made this statement the motto for their lives.

For them obstacles are made to be faced and overcome: a crisis makes them still more imaginative and intervening.

For them placing their duties before their rights continues to be important. The rights of others are their day to day duties.

For them the term charity, Caritas, is not worn out, nor is it politically incorrect because it represents Love, a force of change which can move mountains.

For them the dignity of the human being demands permanent and renewed efforts in areas such as blindness, deafness, handicap, incapacitating sickness.

Words exist which they do not recognize since they crossed them out of their lives.

Words such as impossible, dismay, despair, fatigue.

They build dreams to give children that life does not want to allow them; they join pieces of lives with a past that sickness has erased.

They give voice to those who lack it. They try finding those who have become lost in the streets or in life.

They teach flying to those who have lost their movement even for the simplest of daily gestures.

They build lasting friendships between people and animals, believing that people and animals can mutually help themselves.

Each one, in her own way, reinvents life, for others and for themselves, every single day.

In the March Activa magazine, Catarina Fonseca gives us advice which I consider totally adequate for the special moment we are living: that in Women’s Day we spread praises and endearments.

What a wonderful extension to the prizes we are awarding tonight: praises and endearments. It’s good for the soul and inexpensive. And being inexpensive is very important these days.

And we, the Portuguese, are very good at this, much better than those that live further to the north.

My congratulations to all the prize winners: to those who are present and to those who could have been here.

I am very, very proud of my countrywomen.

After all we always need each other very much.

Maria Cavaco Silva