In the New Year’s Honours of 1999 Mrs Icolyn Smith was awarded the MBE. It was the first public recognition of her achievement and has subsequently been followed by many others. In 2012 she appeared on Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire, resulting in a substantial donation to the Oxford Community Soup Kitchen. It was this project, which she began some 20 years earlier, that has enabled her to help hundreds, perhaps thousands of people whose lives have been shattered by events they could not control.

Icolyn was born in rural Jamaica in a community so remote that vehicular traffic could not reach it and, of course, there was no  electricity. There was not much money either, and little need for it, because in that self-sufficient community the main means of exchange was barter.

This drive, together with her compassion and Christian faith, inspired the Oxford Community Soup Kitchen for which she has become so well known. In 2013 the soup kitchen became a charity, The Icolyn Smith Foundation.