Taking Her Message to the Stage

Whether Nyasha Sprow, 13, is onstage at a beauty pageant or volunteering with the National Kidney Foundation, her greatest desire is to raise awareness of organ and tissue donation.

Before she was even born, her life and her family had already been shaped by tragedy. Two of her older sisters died in 1985 at the ages of 1 and 3. They were organ and tissue donors.

In 2009, her brother died of kidney failure while waiting for a kidney donation. And just last year, her older sister was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis only three months after giving birth.

“I know how much that affected my mom and my family,” Nyasha said. “It’s given me a reason to do things. It’s given me a reason to speak out about organ and tissue donation.”

She has been in pageantry since she was 10 and has won a state title every year for the past three years.

She is a spokesperson for the Nation Kidney Foundation and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and also works with the Washington Regional Transplant Community. She has also volunteered with the American Red Cross. She uses her two minutes of speech time during the beauty pageants’ Spokesmodel segments to spread awareness of these issues. She also uses the titles she has won to give her further opportunities to speak about these issues.

Most recently, on March 19, she won the Dale City Multicultural Award for her community service with the National Kidney Foundation and the Washington Regional Transplant Community.

“Watching her brother as they took him off life support—she had a more personal urgency to get the word out,” Connie said. “Had there been one more donor available, he would have been able to have the second kidney that would have saved his life.”

Nyasha and her family have learned how to support each other in their grief.

“As a family, we’ve done pretty well walking through each separate person’s path of grief but still staying connected,” Connie said. “A lot of times, losing a child will tear a family apart, but we’ve done really well staying here for each other. Everyone grieves in a different way. We let everyone have a different space and let them know we’re here if they need us, rather than saying, ‘You’re not feeling enough. You’re not doing it right.’”

Nyasha channels her sadness into her dancing.

“If more things are on her mind, she’s more intense in her dancing,” said mother Connie Sprow. “She can lose herself in the movement and the process of dancing and that relieves a lot of her sadness.”

Nyasha has been dancing since she was 2, and dancing competitively since she was 10. She dances competitively in several different genres, but tap dancing is her favorite.

“Tap is different because everything is more upbeat,” she said. “It’s exciting and fast.”

Nyasha recently won a dance scholarship at a dance convention called The Pulse. With the scholarship, she can continue on to the next level of competition in San Francisco.

If she made it to the top again, she might eventually get to take classes with the choreographers from So You Think You Can Dance.

“To learn all their styles and techniques -- that would be really, really cool,” Nyasha said. She dreams of someday working on So You Think You Can Dance as a dancer or choreographer.

“She loves to dance and she just happens to be good at it,” Connie said.

Pageantry is a big stress reliever for the Sprow family as they travel and prepare for each pageant.

“It’s a great time for us to bond and hang out together without having the stress of school and work,” Nyasha said. “It’s a great way to express myself—I have fun and get dressed up and feel pretty.”

Nyasha’s favorite part in pageant preparation is buying the dress.

“We go to so many different stores just to find the perfect dress,” she said. “Something that really stands out to me—whether it’s a bright color or lots of rhinestones—and something that I really feel comfortable in, most like myself.”

Connie owns a suit business and makes business suits for all the girls in the pageants. “Nyasha designs the suits, I make them, and we get excited about how cute they look,” she said.

“When I get older, I can still educate others on organ and tissue donation,” Nyasha said. “There will never be a time when people don’t need to hear it.”

Connie said that she hoped her daughter would continue to be as inspiring to others as she is to her mother.

“When I watch her, it’s hard to believe she’s just 13 years old,” she said. “Sometimes I’m in awe of how poised she can be. Her willingness to step up and really make a difference makes me proud. We had one person come up and tell us that they were going to be a donor after they listened to her. Who knows how many other lives she’s changed. Some days, you don’t want to get up and do anything, but watching her, you say, ‘Oh, she can do it. I can do it too.’”