Local resident working to raise global awareness
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- Published on Thursday, November 12, 2015
Photo by Dr. Alice Kar Yan Wong. Deva-Marie Beck, co-founder and representative of NIGH speaking at the International Nursing Conference in Stepanakert.
By Kira Paterson
Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press
One local resident is making a big impact in the world. Deva-Marie Beck, of Neepawa, is a co-founder and representative of the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH).
NIGH is a “grassroots-to-global” team that has worked with the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Their main goal is to raise awareness of the importance of nurses and midwives to healthcare in every nation.
This past September, Beck was invited to three countries in Europe to take part in several health conferences representing NIGH. She went to Norway, Switzerland and Armenia.
Beck was in Norway for a community Peace and Health Week. While in the country, Beck visited the Red Cross Nordic United World College. At the college, she met globally-minded young adults from all over the world. The stories she heard from these young people really stuck with her. She is currently working with these students to develop a website where they and other globally concerned citizens can share their stories with the world. She said they plan to launch the website in the spring of 2016.
In Switzerland, Beck went to Geneva for a WHO conference. She had collaborated with WHO in 2008 and 2014 to make videos about the universal need for nurses and midwives. She was invited to the conference as an official participant and reporter. Beck said that previously, WHO had been more focused around medicine and pharmaceuticals. She said that it is exciting to see them start to pay attention to nurses and midwives and hopes it will be a trend that continues.
From there, she went to Armenia. In Yerevan, Armenia, she spoke to an audience of nursing students and faculty at the International Armenian Nursing Congress. She was the keynote speaker there, informing them on what NIGH does. She also went to an Armenian republic in Azerbaijan called Nagorno Karabakh. In its capital, Stepanakert, she attended their first International Nursing Conference. There, over 500 nurses and the republic’s president, patriarch and health minister all listened to Beck present NIGH’s 2020 vision for global advocacy. She said the highlight of that experience was hearing the president of Nagorno Karabakh acknowledge that the health of their republic would not be possible without nurses and midwives.
NIGH was established in 2004, by a group of people who were nurses, Nightingale scholars, community health activists and more. They knew of Florence Nightingale’s impact on healthcare and nursing during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and decided to carry on her legacy into the 21st century. Florence Nightingale is said to be the founder of modern nursing education, and she is honoured around the world. NIGH strives to uphold her values and share them with the world.
Beck said that she hopes to be an example to the people of Neepawa and other small towns. She is proof that it doesn’t just have to be high-paid people in far off big cities that make the difference in the world. She said that the gap between grassroots and global is narrowing and she hopes the small town residents will start to see it.
