At 25, Simone Cavanaugh is about to become the youngest recipient of a local humanitarian award.

Every step Cavanaugh takes wouldn’t be possible without medicine. She’s been living with juvenile idiopathic arthritis since the age of six – with pain once so sever she could only get around in a wheelchair.

But the pain, she says, mobilized her to help others.

“Living with that kind of pain so early on in my childhood opened up my eyes to being empathetic to other people’s suffering,” she explained.

Cavanaugh became a spokesperson for the fight against childhood arthritis, advocating for the needs of children who also face physical limitations.

But it was years later, on a college school trip to Nicaragua when she met Milton, a four-year-old with Cerebral Palsy. She then realized there was no one to help or advocate for children like him.

“How is it possible that myself, as a kid in a wheelchair, had access to all these activities and the kids I work with at Mackay have all this access to equipment that allows them to learn and share and communicate,” Cavanaugh explained.

“But just because of where this boy was born, he would be lying in bed in the dark all day.”

Over the next year she fundraised to get Milton a wheelchair. And with the help of a volunteer occupational therapist, Marie-Kim McFetridge, Milton’s life changed.

Together, Cavanaugh and McFetridge founded the non-profit organization Pivot International.

Cavanaugh’s work got her a seat on the Prime Minister’s youth council, and she’s recently finished her Law degree at McGill focusing on international human rights.

“I’m trying to take advantage of every opportunity that I have to make an impact,” she said.

Her work has also impacted Peter Star, who’s on the selection committee for the Laurie Normand Starr Award. The award commemorates his wife, who worked tirelessly to end child hunger in Montreal.

“In the past we had been awarding people who had already had a career of doing great things in the community. But when we looked at it, she climbed all the same mountains and had done all the same things – and she has a long time to go,” Starr explained.

Cavanaugh will receive the honour at the annual Table of Hope, which raises funds for Share the Warmth’s school program.

The honour, she said, will help propel her forward, even if it’s still accompanied by often crippling pain on a daily basis.

“The key thing is that I get up after and I stop feeling sorry for myself and moving on to the next thing, and not waste the time that I have on this planet,” Cavanaugh said.