Manavi Handa, R.M.
Manavi has been practicing midwifery for 20 years. Her parents, East Indian immigrants, were very active in community organizing. Manavi credits her commitment to social justice to her family and daily discussions about racism and belonging. Because of them, Manavi has focused her midwifery on serving impoverished newcomers and racialized communities and by tackling the systemic barriers faced by people without health insurance and/or with precarious immigration status. In 2011, she established Midwifery services at a community walk-in clinic for uninsured residents in Toronto. Since then she has been Clinical Director, seeing all pregnant clinic clients and overseeing Midwife volunteers. In 2015, she quietly initiated a ground-breaking cost-effectiveness study. These findings were essential in securing on-going stable funding for diagnostic tests and consultations for all uninsured midwifery clients.The resulting benefits of access to appropriate, and sometimes, life-saving reproductive care cannot be overstated. In 2016 Manavi lived her commitment, volunteering at the receiving hotel for new Syrian refugees in Toronto. For 16 relentless weeks, Manavi provided prenatal care to all pregnant people and arranged caregivers for them as they moved to different communities in the GTA. A tenacious urban community hero, Manavi Handa deserves both the cape and the kudos. |
Naomi Wolfe, R.M.
Anishnawbe, Bear clan, Brunswick House First Nation. She works at Shkagamik-kwe, an Aboriginal Health Access Centre within the traditional unseeded territory of the Atikameksheng Anishnaabeg peoples, in the community known commonly as Sudbury. Naomi began her midwifery journey in 2010 at Tsi Non:we Ionnakeratstha Ona:grahsta’ maternal and child centre. She became the first Indigenous trained Midwife to complete the International Midwifery Preregistration Program and also become registered. This important approach shaped her view of childbirth as ceremony in the care of women and families. Naomi quietly yet relentlessly works to ensure everyone has equal opportunity to the highest quality of culturally safe care. As a result, Shkagamik-kwe has seen huge success in the Indigenous community increasing access to important, comprehensive, and collaborative maternal-child health service in the region. Supporting families in breastfeeding is an additional passion. As a lactation consultant Naomi provides support to families; her experience and expertise bolstering her wisdom. In all this work, Naomi has demonstrated the deep value of including traditional practices and ceremony for Indigenous communities. By nurturing families with humility, with ceremony and with wide and compelling expertise, Naomi honours her broader community: the very ideal of the cape awards in action. |