Helena Sanders née Charles (16 April 1911 – 14 June 1997) was a Cornish humanitarian, cultural activist, politician and poet.
[2] In 1950, she organised a group of actors to perform the play Bewnans Meriasek in Cornish at the Celtic Congress.
[3] Sanders was the first leader of the Cornish political party Mebyon Kernow (MK), founded by herself in January 1951.
[6] Sanders was the also the first person to put MK policies to the electorate when she won a seat on Camborne–Redruth Urban District Council in 1953.
She was interested in the governing structure of the Isle of Man as a potential model for Cornwall and sympathized with other Celtic nationalist and separatist movements.
[13] Sanders and Hawkins were the first people in Italy to use the process of trap-neuter-return (TNR) to control cat populations.
[15][16] A book, by Frank Wintle, Helena Sanders and the Cats of Venice: The Story of a Remarkable Woman was published in 1989.