The youths are believed to be the future of any nation; they are seen as the hope of tomorrow by all. Understanding the importance of the role of the youths in nation building, the Chris Oyakhilome Foundation has, for a decade now, been identifying, recognising, supporting, and celebrating young people all over Africa, that have distinguished themselves through the acts of service, community development projects, health projects, etc that they carry out in their localities. The Foundation not only celebrate these young leaders, it also provides a form of mentorship and training for them to do more, raise more young leaders like themselves, and spread the same passion around.
Every year, the Foundation holds a nominations show in which ten winners are selected for the award. A star prize winner is then picked out of the ten winners. Following the awards, a Press Conference is held as a form of publicity and an official exhibition of the various projects the young leaders have carried out.
According to the Chief Operating Officer of Loveworld Inc. Pastor Ifeoma Chiemeka, the Foundation has carried out quite a number of projects in its ten years of existence. These projects include, but are not limited to:
Recruitment of 65,539 voluntary blood donors,
Donation of 6,000 litres of blood to save 400,000 lives across the African continent,
657 first aid training sessions and 202 public enlightenment campaigns
Recruiting and training 10,161 first responders who have provided life-saving first aid and CPR to 162,576 beneficiaries,
“Executing over 2,000,000 humanitarian acts of service,”
“Organising 1,302 conferences and summits that impacted 81,650,329 families across Africa,” among several.
The Senior Executive Officer of the Foundation, Dr. Olajumoke Akisanya also told the press members that several projects were carried out through the Leadership Initiative Awards. According to her, “To eradicate poverty and foster economic growth, a food and resource material distribution was carried out in Malawi, where over 500 orphanage children were provided with foodstuffs, hygiene kits, relief items and educational materials.” Others are: the teenage technology and digital awareness project, technology workshop project, environmental sustainability campaign project, and renovate police community project.
Summarily, Pastor Ayodeji, one of the officers described the FALF as a platform to stir a contributive value to the growth and the development of the African continent. The FALF has inspired over 73,829,127 young people to carry out 25,848,81 sustainable projects that benefitted 17,823,160 families in 54 African countries with a cumulative project engagement margin of 110%.
The 2022 Star prize winner, Lebsey Lebaga told the members of the press her next line of action: “In Cameroon, there is no trained community health advocate. The community health workers are almost insignificant. “Within my powers in the next two years, we should have at least 3,000 persons. That will cause a tremendous change and shift and there would be a decrease in some communicable diseases.”
The medical student has decided to advocate for a thriving primary health care system in her nation in order to alleviate mortality rate in Cameroon. She has a four point agenda drawn, to help her actualise her dream. They are: <span;>advocating health insurance policy, training community health workers, implementing very strong policies that healthcare professionals are well taken care of, and improving the management of non-communicable diseases in society.
