Friday 31 July 2015

A MENTOR … AND A MENTEE: A STORY OF TRANSFORMATION


I have it in me, I will never allow anyone to tarnish my point of view”
I graduated with the hope and aspiration of rising to fame but to my dismay, challenges almost crumbled my great dream. Glory to God, all the challenges are gone now, but I asked a sincere question: What went wrong? I discovered that my environment and I contributed to a whole lot of things, so I accepted my part of the blame.
Meanwhile, I came back from memory lane when I met with a 14 year old girl, Jemima Adedoja (not her real name) at the Activate Youth Camp 2015. Her story reminded me of the beginning of my predicament as a child.
Jemima, a Junior Secondary School (JSS) 3 student, is my mentee and a member of my team - Amber. She is a very brilliant and good looking girl with a promising future, but lacks the courage to relate and express her mind. In short, she had low self-esteem. I took time out to concentrate on Jemima after series of complaint from her parents and other mentors in the camp.
In my interaction with Jemima, she said “I always keep quiet so that I will not make a mistake. My parents and teachers in school believe I cannot do anything. Most times, people ignore my suggestions and I feel I am worthless”. Of course, you are very brilliant and as a matter of fact, I have never seen a young girl speaking with such dexterity like you, I responded.
Afterwards, in all our team meetings, I ensured Jemima contributed to the team discussions. Guess what? The team started adopting her suggestions without hesitation. At a time, Jemima volunteered to be a lead vocal at one of the camp’s singing competitions. Also, she expressed her interest to write about her experience in the camp, immediately, I encouraged her to go ahead. Amazingly, Jemima wrote an article which the editor considered the most suitable article for the moment. You don’t mean it; Jemima exclaimed when I informed her that the article had gone live!
I have it in me, I will never allow anyone to tarnish my point of view, Jemima expressed with a dauntless smile. I will pursue my passion of becoming a renowned blogger while I study hard to earn a degree in the Arts. I was moved to tears because I never thought 7 days could be enough to change a young girl's perception about life.
Osho Ademola Joel
Mentor, AYC’15

Editor's Note: I am looking forward to being introduced to Jemima's Dad to help her channel her path to being an inspirational and world-class blogger


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