When Youths Drive Health Advocacy

• It is that time of the year you take stock in the stores and the wardrobes of the mind, throwing away "items" not needed pushing them to the mind's back end office of spent memories and experiences, with clear plans to leave them behind in 2017 and matching towards 2018 with the ones we cherish even as the ungaly ones hobble behind us to serve as lessons for the future. One of such great memories is my 50th birthday partnership with the Sickle Cell Aid Foundation - a team of young and very dynamic people with innovative ideas to change the landscape of Sickle Cell in Nigeria.

• I got involved with this Foundation when I mentored the co -founder Nkem Azinge through the Yali Mentorship program. Since then, I have also met and worked closely Bukky Bolarinwa, the current Lead of the Organization and a lot of the members of the team. We had an Art Exhibition at the Red Door to raise funds for their 2 year project plan. It was an evening of pure joy and also an opportunity for my children to understand the value of these projects - so my son deejayed and my daughter recorded her perspective on her You Tube Channel.

• We were not able to raise much in terms of fund generation - sickle cell still remains a very unattractive conversation in Nigeria, but we were able to trigger the apetite of more youths for similar projects. Out going students of Art Faculty of the Yaba College of Technology linked up with SCAF and partnered to have their first exhibition with some proceeds of sales pledged to SCAF.

• I remain optimistic that our resources lie not in our oil or non - oil sector, but in our Youth -if and only if we support in chaneling their energies to laudable projects especially in the healthcare sector that is grossly underfunded. We need fresh and powerful voices to shape our advocacy landscape in Nigeria and in Sub sharan Africa.

• I am matching with these great memories into 2018.