Nafis Sadik Award for Courage to
Dawn Sinclair Shapiro
Dawn Sinclair Shapiro
On Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at the Rotary International Convention in New Orleans, RFPD annouced that Dawn Sinclair Shapiro is this year's recipient of the Nafis Sadik Award for Courage.
The award will be presented to Dawn at the FACETS CINÉMATHÈQUE in Chicago during the theatrical release of the film on Monday, July 25, 2011. Tickets for this event must be purchased in advance and are available online or by calling 773-281-4114.
Dawn began her journalism career working for the award-winning news magazine program CBS News Sunday Morning. Dawn has worked as a Producer, Writer, and Online Editor for Tribune Broadcasting, CNBC, MSNBC, Dateline NBC, and Chicago Public Radio. She directed, wrote and produced her first feature length documentary, “Inside the Handy Writer's Colony, which aired in 2008. Her new film, “The Edge of Joy”, about maternal mortality in Nigeria was called “eye-opening” by Global Health magazine.
“The Edge of Joy” is a documentary that follows an ensemble cast of Nigerian doctors, midwives and families to the frontlines of maternal care. Inside a maternity ward in Kano, Northern Nigeria, the film chronicles distressed labors, deaths, and miraculous survival. Outside, lack of blood supply transportation and family planning are examined as causes of the cycle that kills more than 36,000 Nigerian women each year. While filming this documentary, Dawn discovered that there was a Rotary project in the same area tackling exactly the problems and causes she was capturing in pictures. Thus, the film and Rotary become directly linked, helping to raise the needed awareness for these defects and providing an effective solution for them. You can find the trailer for the film on YouTube.
Dawn's latest documentary comes at a perfect time with the announcement of Rotary's new Area of Focus “Maternal and Child Health”. RFPD supports this new area of focus by establishing projects with the primary focus of improving Maternal and Child Health. From RFPD's main project, Maternal and Child Health in Nigeria, providing prevention and treatment of Obstetric Fistula, to building a Maternity Wing in a hospital in Nepal to the Saheli Centers in India providing vocational training and reproductive health education for women to many more. Go to http://www.rifpd.org/Projects/ServiceProjects.shtml for more information on RFPD projects.
Dawn has agreed to produce a 20 minute version of the documentary for distribution and viewing in Rotary Clubs. Please contact Lori Arnold at RFPD, larnold@rifpd.org or 770-407-5633, to obtain a copy.
