The Shining Star MADA is awarded to an individual who has displayed outstanding dedication or has been responsible for outstanding accomplishments of local significance in the field of multiple births in a local community in Canada. One Shining Star award will be given out to each MBC Chapter annually.

The winner of the 2022 Shining Star award for Toronto Parents of Multiples (TPOM) is Melanie Teitelman.

Melanie has been a rock, keeping TPOM going through a very difficult year. She lives and breathes TPOM and gives the organization her all, despite having many other commitments. She is incredibly reliable, diligent, hardworking, and an overall blast to work with. She is considerate, organized, responsible, inclusive, creative, positive and uplifting.

Here is an example of her excellence: After two years of being unable to host our twice annual consignment sale, she worked incredibly hard, and with a very short time frame, to get our spring sale to happen in 2022. COVID restrictions were slowly being lifted and our membership (and the public) was cautious. However, she did it, enabling families who had been hard hit financially to have access to low-cost baby and kids' items and for our families to make some much needed money. Despite concerns from some members, the sale went off without a hitch and everyone who participated were glad we had done it. As a bonus, when it came time to host the fall sale we were ahead of the game and the sale was one of the smoothest run and best sales we've had.... and all thanks to Melanie!

Melanie started her volunteer journey as Sale Director. She has since become the VP of Events and now is co-President with Helen (another incredible volunteer). She took on the lion's share of event planning as the pandemic hit hard and carried on. She managed to put together creative online events with enough variety to appeal to members with different aged children and different interests and needs. This kept the organization surviving and thriving throughout the pandemic.

She championed bringing back some in-person events when the time was right. As well as the sale, she also organized new events like Treetop Trekking and even ran the event although her children could not attend.
We honestly could not do what we do without her!