We are very pleased to announce that Jane Willwerth has been selected as the 2012 recipient of the Stephanie Downs Memorial Award.

As the recipient of the Stephanie Downs Memorial Award Jane will have the opportunity to make contributions to the lives of international students within the Faculty of Management by:

• Participating on the planning committee for the international student orientation.
• Acting as one of the facilitators during the international student orientation.
• Through consultation, providing content and updating the Faculty’s international student website

Candidates for the Stephanie Downs Memorial Award are selected for their demonstrated commitment to leadership, student life at SIM and to international librarianship.

After high school, Jane spent five months running after-school programming at the Prisoner Assistance Nepal Children’s Home in Kathmandu, Nepal. In the Home’s library, Jane saw for the first time how a small library could make a big difference.

Jane attended Carleton University where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Human Rights and Political Science. This provided her with a solid grounding in international development with a special focus on African politics and gender. While at Carleton, Jane completed a practicum placement at Amnesty International Canada, where she worked under the organization’s Information Coordinator. Again, she found how library and information management skills play a critical role in the human rights and international development fields.

Now at Dalhousie, Jane seeks to marry her values to a set of in-demand skills that can help address legitimate international development problems. She is currently co-chair of the Dalhousie chapter of Librarians Without Borders (LWB), an organization that seeks to eliminate the information inequality that currently exists between different regions of the world. It is with LWB that Jane sees her skills and outlook converge, as she applies what she has learned in class to real-world development scenarios. The convergence continues as Jane completes a summer internship at the United Nations Multimedia Library, located at UN Headquarters in New York City.