Valerie Place

Valerie Place (1969 to 1993) was an Irish nurse and overseas aid worker. Born in Walkinstown, Dublin, the third of six children, she trained as a nurse at St James's Hospital in Dublin from 1987 to 1990 and worked for a time with the Caring and Sharing Association. In September 1992 she went to Somalia on a two-year contract with the Irish aid agency Concern, at the height of the conflict and famine, and supervised a feeding station for 2,500 children and an adjoining school in Mogadishu. On 22 February 1993 the convoy she was travelling in was ambushed near Afgoi and she was fatally wounded, becoming the second western aid worker killed in Somalia that year. Her death sharpened criticism of the failure to protect aid workers. The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs founded a commemorative scholarship in her name that brings Somali teachers and nurses to train in Ireland, and St James's Hospital school of nursing dedicated a portrait and a classroom to her.