From preventing malaria to the coronavirus, Dr. Osita Okonkwu is empowering local communities in Enugu, Nigeria. A 2009-2010
Hupert H. Humphrey Fellow at Tulane University, Dr. Okonkwu became involved in service early on in his career. During the ten-month educational and cultural fellowship program, Okankwu volunteered with the local chapter of the Red Cross, where he won an Alumni Impact Award for spearheading a project that trained health workers on the use of intermittent preventive therapy (IPTp). The project, aimed at preventing malaria among pregnant women in rural communities in Enugu, ignited Dr. Okankwu’s interest in forming his own organization.
iphAE, which aims to improve health systems and access to quality care in Nigeria, hones in on three core areas: improving sex equality in relation to healthcare, ensuring better access to clean water and sanitation, and improving the general health and wellbeing of local communities in Enugu.
Dr. Okonkwu’s dedication to achieving healthcare improvement can be seen through his most recent project, the Mask-Up Enugu Campaign. This program, which distributes facemasks to those who have not had access to them in Enugu during COVID-19, highlights the importance of reducing the spread of the virus and protecting those in their communities most vulnerable.
In addition, Dr. Okonkwu has set out to ensure every orphaned child in Nigeria has access to quality healthcare. Through his foundation, the Initiative for Improved Population Health Access and Empowerment (iphAE), Dr. Okonkwu collaborates with healthcare workers and leaders across the country to ensure that Nigerian populations in need can access timely and safe healthcare resources, particularly in the wake of COVID-19.
The collective work carried out by Dr. Okonkwu and his team represents their commitment to empowering and educating local populations, improving access to and the quality of healthcare, and demonstrating the role that every individual has to play in protecting one another and their communities.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has placed health at the forefront of everyday conversations around the world. But when it comes to mental health, open discussions on this topic still carry a lot of stigma in the U.S. and around the world, even though mental health is just as important as physical health.
Basketball All-Stars and mental health advocates Chamique Holdsclaw and Kevin Love joined us for a special MentorTalks episode on October 9, 2020. They each shared their stories on seeking help for their mental health, and discussed the importance of maintaining good mental health and reducing the stigma around seeking help.
Catch up on the event above, or at @InternationalExchangeAlumni on Facebook.
This event was hosted by the U.S. Department of State, as a collaboration between the Offices of Alumni Affairs, Global Health Diplomacy, and Sports Diplomacy.
More about our speakers...
Chamique Holdsclaw
Mental Health Advocate; retired Women’s National Basketball Association professional basketball player; Olympic Gold Medalist; and Sports Envoy exchange alumna
Chamique Holdsclaw is a basketball legend and mental health advocate. She is the former number 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft, the all time leading scorer and rebounder in either men’s or women’s basketball at the University of Tennessee, won Gold with the U.S. Women’s basketball team at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and was a six-time All Star in the WNBA. In 2018 she was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
Since retiring from professional basketball in 2010, Chamique has become a mental health advocate and has had her story of living with bipolar disorder featured in the documentary “Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw”. Chamique has also traveled internationally with the State Department, as a Sports Envoy to Senegal in 2012, and has remained engaged in community outreach internationally over the years with the Sports Diplomacy Division in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Kevin Love
NBA champion; Founder, Kevin Love Fund; & Olympic Gold Medalist
Kevin Love is an NBA champion, Olympic gold medalist professional basketball player and mental health advocate. At the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), he led his team to the NCAA’s Final Four and was inducted into their Athletic Hall of Fame in 2020. Since being drafted to the NBA in 2008, Kevin Love has been named an All Star five times, and was an NBA champion with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016.
In 2018, Love wrote publicly about his mental health after a panic attack during a game in an article, “Everyone is Going Through Something” for the online media outlet, the Player’s Tribune. Not long after that, he founded the Kevin Love Fund to give people the tools to prioritize mental health alongside physical health and to destigmatize conversations around mental health and mental illness. He has remained an outspoken advocate and, in September 2020, wrote a follow-up article in the Player’s Tribune, “To Anybody Going Through Something.”
The Vital Voices GROW Fellowship (VV GROW) is a leading global accelerator program for women owners of small and medium sized businesses. Throughout the 12-month virtual program, participants will gain customized business skills, leadership development training, and access to professional networks of more than 18,000 women leaders around the world. Applications for the program are now open and will be considered until December 15.
Despite the proven benefits of women’s economic engagement, women business owners face disproportionate barriers in growing their businesses. These barriers can include difficulty accessing professional business networks, a lack of technology and training, and often unequal protection under the law.
Vital Voices, an implementing partner of the U.S. Department of State, is a non-governmental organization that partners with female leaders to support women’s economic empowerment, women’s political participation, and human rights worldwide.
Throughout VV Grow, female participants will engage in action-oriented strategic plans to help address these barriers and to continue to grow their businesses, while gaining invaluable skills in strategic planning, financial management, strategic communications, and leadership.
The VV GROW Fellowship is exclusively for women who lead or own a for-profit business. The fellowship includes a $1,500 participation fee.
A limited number of need and merit-based scholarships will be available, and details will be provided in the notifications of acceptance into the program. You can access the VV Grow Fellowship application on their site here.
ELIGIBILITY
Who can apply for the VV Grow Fellowship?
Women entrepreneurs or social entrepreneurs who:
- Own a qualifying business that…
- Have been operating this business for at least 3 years
- Employs at least 3 full time staff including the applicant (or the equivalent of 3 full time staff in part times taff)
- Generates at least US $40,000 in annual sales•Are proficient in spoken and written English
- Have demonstrated leadership, key decision-making authority within their business and manage the business on an ongoing basis
- Have a commitment toward making positive social impact and an interest in expanding their social impact
- If you are involved in more than one business, the above criteria must apply to the business that you would like to focus on during the fellowship
YES Alumni of Lebanon didn’t wait to pull together to help Beirut following the August 4, 2020 explosion in the city’s port. They took on helping their community right after the blast, helping clear rubble, checking on survivors to administer first aid, working in a local hospital, and closing up blown out windows in residents’ homes in the first week after the tragedy.
“We can’t deny that our experience in YES built in ourselves and in our personalities the idea of service,” says Nazih Raychouni, president of the YES Alumni Association in Lebanon. “I personally understood and was introduced to community service and community work when I went on YES during my exchange year. And I took it with me to Lebanon.”
His fellow alumni are quick to credit him for his work after the clean up, as his social media posts amplified calls for donations and aid that were answered world-wide. The group was able to raise $1,000 through a GoFundMe page alone, has been distributing 300 meals a day from donations through places like the World Central Kitchen in California and over 2,000 boxes of food provisions to the hard hit neighborhoods of Gemmayzeh, Quarantino, and Mar Mikhael. The group is anticipating receiving overseas clothing donations for affected residents even now.
But that isn’t all the exchange alumni have done. After its initial clean up efforts, the group shifted into data collection and analysis mode in the neighborhood of Gemmayzeh, which they have now handed off to NGOs, like the Red Cross and MSF to distribute medicine and medical care, as well as to allot housing for those whose homes were destroyed. Just as impressively, they established “listening posts” with the Lebanese Cultural Association where psychologists were unhand for nine hours a day to assess and aid the mental health of anyone affected.
Members of the group are quick to add that they’ve all supported the efforts in their own way, according to their own talents and skills. They include Ali Akil, a nurse who was at one of the central hospitals receiving victims who even now stays for extra shifts and volunteers at a primary care clinic to treat the wounded; Hoda Al Hawari, a new graduate and former South region YES coordinator from neighboring town whose work got her sister involved a new exchange alumni; to former YES Alumni Association in Lebanon president Amir Hijazi who coordinated data collection efforts. Even a current student, YES alumnus, and current Mount Lebanon representative coordinator Houssam Al Jawhari seized on the YES spirit to lead a group from his university in collecting and distributing clothing along with contributing to clean up efforts.
Amir says that Lebanon has had a tough time in 2020, but he credits the YES Alumni Association’s current president, Nazih, for his work in bringing all of them together to help their communities. They’re a family, he says, and they are a remarkable one at that.
Kunle Adewale was determined to find a way to combine the arts with medicine as a therapy, but when he couldn’t find any institutions or mentors to partner with, the primary school teacher and artist created his own non-governmental organization (NGO).
“What I couldn’t find, I became,” Kunle says in his MentorTalks interview. “I was looking for individuals that were using art in health. I couldn’t find any, so I became that person.”
It was through his Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders program that Kunle was able to build on his passion. His journey has led him to create a network of 300 students and professionals, and to impact “over 15,000 beneficiaries through his art programs in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and the United States.”
Failing forward
According to Kunle, when we admire people, what we admire is the success story, “But we never pay attention to how they’ve failed,” he says.
“If you ever fail in life, fail forward. When you fail forward, you use it as a propeller to become successful. Failures help you learn how to do something.”
“I never thought I would go to college. My dad told me what I can’t be and what I can’t do. But I said ‘no, I want to go to college.’ Seven times in seven years I failed. If I had given up, I would have never met President Barack Obama,” he says.
Kunle’s work as one of the first Eyes of the Artist Fellows led to a special honor: Cincinnati, Ohio Mayor John Cranley declared August 2 “Kunle Adewale Day” in recognition of his contribution to the United States in both the fields of Arts and Medicine.
Kunle credits his Mandela Washington Fellowship for giving him an education in the work he wanted to do and as a “ripple effect” that led him to his most recent stay in the U.S. as an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health. As a part of the fellowship, Kunle has been running art workshops for seniors impacted by dementia in San Francisco, California.
The project has gone virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Kunle has been collecting love letters from around the world alongside photographs to send to first responders, as well as to send letters of hope to COVID-19 patients in partnership with The Foundation for Photo/Art in Hospitals.
“The world is in a great deal of pain right now,” he says. Collecting these letters is a way to spread empathy and healing to medical staff and to patients, which is key to their wellbeing.
“One of the implicit challenges that COVID-19 presents to us is the resultant worsening mental health problems and stigmatization of not just the patients but equally the healthcare givers at the frontline,” Kunle says. “This is the time to show solidarity, a moment for our shared humanity to make the world a better place.”
The project is still in its collection phase, but once the work is out there in the fall, Kunle hopes that the art will uplift patients, family members, and healthcare workers.
Words and art are powerful, he says, and he stresses the journey of making art is the important element, not the output. That is what allows Kunle to turn sadness, isolation, and depression into healing through the expression of the human spirit.
YSEALI Professional Fellows Program Alumnus (2015) and
Cultural Vistas’s Alumni Impact Award winner (2019) Aushim Merchant’s passions of youth advocacy and environmental protection converge with the Mekong River, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world.
Inspired by his experiences on the YSEALI Professional Fellows Program, which featured a four-week fellowship with King County’s (State of Washington) Department of Natural Resources and Parks, the Bangkok-native founded the Mintra Foundation with the goal of promoting more inclusion, economic development, and better conditions for the environment with a particular focus on water management, conservation and drip irrigation with farmers in local villages. Aushim’s subsequent contributions to the Mekong River Project in March 2016, which was an Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund (AEIF) finalist that year, and his participation in the 2016 YSEALI Generation: Oceans regional exchange workshop in Jakarta, Indonesia, fostered collaboration between leaders from Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand.
He thinks it’s important to get the youth in particular to think about the issues at hand so that there will be solutions within their lifetimes and that cooperation starts with one person doing something small locally.
“All you need to do is start something in a small way in your own time and make sure that it is feasible, viable, sustainable, and that the outcome of what you do is to promote the conservation of the Mekong River,” he says.
The river itself, which runs for 2,703 miles through six countries, is at the center of agriculture, transportation, energy, fisheries, as well as drinking water and the effects of saltwater intrusion have a cascading threat effect on multiple industries, livelihoods, and wellbeing.
That is why conserving the river is so crucial, and as Merchant points out, it is not just a job source, but a way of life for the communities around it.
