From sewing bags in her kitchen during lockdown to leading an award-winning national charity, Sarah Gardner BEM proves how compassion and creativity can change lives
BY FRANCESCA RAPISARDA
When Sarah Gardner BEM received the news that she had been named one of the UK’s Women of the Year 2025, she admits it still felt “surreal.” Only days earlier, she had attended the Best Businesswoman Awards, her fifth consecutive nomination, where she once again won Silver. Then came the message that would confirm what her community already knew: Sarah Gardner is a force for good.
“Personally, it’s a powerful reminder of how far we’ve come since those early days of cutting up old bedsheets in my kitchen,” she says. “Professionally, it’s wonderful to see purpose-driven work being recognised alongside traditional business success. This award isn’t just mine, it belongs to every volunteer who sewed, knitted, packed, donated, or delivered.”
Sarah’s charity, Serving Our Superheroes, began as a simple act of compassion during the COVID-19 pandemic. What started with a single phone call from a worried nurse friend quickly grew into a nationwide movement, one that has now supported more than 200,000 people, distributed £4.5 million worth of essential items, and diverted tonnes of waste from landfill through creative upcycling.
In 2020, as hospitals faced severe PPE shortages, Sarah began mobilising volunteers from across the community. “We started by making reusable laundry bags for NHS staff, something they could throw straight into the wash after a shift,” she recalls. “Within months, we’d produced and distributed more than 2,400 of them.”
Balancing full-time work, home-schooling two children with additional needs, and volunteering, Sarah’s days were a whirlwind of activity. “It felt like a modern-day war effort, everyone wanted to help.”
As the initiative grew, requests poured in, for toiletry packs for hospital patients, baby kits for new mothers, and aid for Afghan and Ukrainian refugees. Formal registration as a charity soon followed, allowing Sarah and her team to expand their impact and partner with businesses and local organisations.
Today, Serving Our Superheroes is seen as a model of sustainability and community collaboration, which has been recognised internationally with the Green Apple Environment Award for Environmental Best Practice.
At the heart of Sarah’s work, there is a powerful mix of compassion and creativity. Her charity’s projects breathe new life into discarded materials, turning old curtains into hospital trousers, fabric offcuts into dresses for women abroad, and surplus toiletries into dignity packs for those in crisis.
“It’s sustainability in action,” Sarah explains. “We’re giving dignity to people while protecting the planet.”
Her success has not gone unnoticed. The charity’s innovative model has inspired partnerships with nearly 40 other organisations through the Helping West London network, collectively coordinating more than £7 million worth of donations to vulnerable communities.
But for Sarah, the true achievement lies not in the numbers. “It’s about the lives we’ve touched,” she says softly. “The mother who received baby essentials. The patient who felt seen and cared for. The volunteers who found purpose again.”
As a project manager and marketer, Sarah brings professionalism to the charity work. “I treat the charity like a business, with strategy, structure, and accountability, but every decision is guided by ethics,” she says. “Business excellence without humanity is hollow. Purpose without structure is unsustainable. The magic happens when you combine both.”
This belief has led Sarah to unite the worlds of business, fashion, and social enterprise. She envisions a future where every brand has a social value arm, upcycling waste into useful products, and embedding sustainability at the core of operations.
“Fashion shapes culture, business drives scale, and social enterprise gives meaning,” she explains. “When these come together, real change happens,” she added.
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