enricocharlesliteraryaward

The Enrico Charles Literary Award concept is to improve the missing human factor in mainstream media press coverage about disability, promoting positive understanding and awareness to people living with disability, with success stories as tools of inspiration on their journey to make success of their own lives, as well as improving knowledge of those who are unaware of the issues that people with a disability face.

With the recognition that disability is now being treated as an important topic both in film and television, this award is starting to be acknowledged as a vital and necessary reward for the work and efforts of writers raising awareness around the world.

Brought about as a result of my personal experiences as a mother of an extraordinary child born with the neuro-muscular condition SMA [Spinal Muscular Atrophy] Type 1 otherwise known as Werdnig Hoffman disease.  The doctors told me he would not live to experience his first birthday,  he surpassed the prognosis by 3 and a half years.

I travelled with him in search of doctors and specialists, from London to New York and Paris.  Not an easy feat with a child using a Bipap, Mechanical Cough machine, body braces suction machines gastrostomy bottle and tubes of all types who is gorgeous, quadraplegic, and because of his genetic disease he can not sit or move unaided and regularly has to have physiotherapy and feeds every four hours... Regardless of the crises that beset him, he remained so content and cheerful, and this convinced me that his life and death would mean something. I resolved that I would make it my mission to find a way to honor his memory and somehow put my experiences and knowledge to good use and help others. 

There are fifty million disabled people in Europe and according to World Health Organization statistics, over six hundred million disabled people around the world.  This is now a time when information and perceptions of disability should be changed, and it is essential for all human beings to work together, disabled or otherwise. When my son died, I felt it was my duty to help improve awareness of disability around the world.

As anyone who has the misfortune to have, or know someone close with a disability will know, the path to finding the right information about the condition can become as stressful as the problem itself. When I was going through this traumatic time, I felt isolated and alone. All the information that was available to me was so clinical and did not have any meaning to me, or my son, and I could not bring myself to talk to faceless charities on the phone or help groups because I could not believe that they would really understand how I was feeling at the time. I believed there was a missing human factor. 

Only newspapers, magazines, television and radio have the power to make the difference.

However it is important that newspapers and publishers embrace and encompass the aims and objectives that this award intends to promote.

Yours truly,

N.D. Charlotte Wingfield-Marotta B.A.(Hons)