Abiola Awosika is Another Bright Nigerian Star.

This is another beautiful Friday great people and it promises great joy.  So sit back and enjoy another inspirational pack courtesy of the I Know a Nigerian Star writing competition. Have a lovely weekend guys !!!!

Dreams often occur before you sleep and when you sleep, you dream about the dreams you had before you fell asleep. Frankly, I don’t think, theoretically that   makes any sense, being that first of all it cannot be humanly possible (you cannot be awake while dreaming) – it defies all concepts of biology, and   second of all, it goes against all scientific laws and theories.

But in reality, we dream before we are lured by the comforts of our beds and the constant worrying about life itself. We just want to go to a place where we cannot worry about others, bother about paying the never ending bills and other activities that make life unbearable sometimes.

Nonetheless, we dream while we are awake and this star’s no exception. Call it cliché or what have you but the best ideas are birthed while we lay lying on our backs ready to call it a night. Abiola Awosika falls under this category of extraordinary bedtime stories happening to regular people. How extraordinary can   life get when you birth a life changing initiatitive just as Abiola did. Now that’s extraordinary!

While lying on her bed, Abiloa got a head bumping idea and this head bump-ish manifestation was in form of an idea that would provide a place, a home and a safe house for kids who were deprived   the basic needs of life such as shoes, books, and even human attention. This realization wasn’t tied to a random bed rendezvous but from series of painful events in her life that made her take this leap of faith to help kids however she could and with the help of her friends, too.

Losing her parents and granddad between the ages of fifteen and twenty three years, Abiola was faced with challenges ranging from trust issues, to difficulties in confiding about her painful losses to friends and even loved ones.

Later realizing that hiding away from the truth wouldn’t change anything, she decided to let go of her inhibitions and channel all her pain in helping underprivileged kids make meaning out of their lives. Regardless of the fact that after losing her benefactors to the cruel arms of death, financially she wasn’t distorted.

She didn’t waste her money going down the path of destruction alongside waywardness   which is usually the case with children who have lost their parents at very tender ages, but Abiola rose to the occasion and decided to leave a stamp on humanity. A stamp of love and   appreciation. All these series of events led to the birth of Earth’s Haven Organization ( www.earthshaven.org ).

This is a Non-Profit Organization that aims at helping and providing underprivileged kids with acquired practical skills such as bag making, shoe making, carpentery, tailoring and vulcanizing as requested by the kids she’s involved with.

Her naked and transparent love for these kids transcend without strain and the kids see and trust her intentions which is apparent from the hugs and kisses she gets whenever she comes around their communities. The aim of the organization is to provide a safe place where kids both orphans and non-orphans get to seek refuge in the midst of scare resources and chances in this changing environment they find themselves in.

The organization’s recent project was the Shoes-on-their-feet social charity movement which held in September, 2013, where well-meaning friends and family donated to help purchase shoes and books for the underprivileged kids between the ages of seven to fifteen years in the Makoko area of Lagos State, Nigeria.

This project got supported by  some Nigerian celebrities like Uti Nwachukwu and singer songwriter, Dammy Krane, who took time out of their busy schedule to support and promote the organization by showing up and having a good time with the kids.

Future projects include the setting up of a library for the Makoko community, where books are being donated at present on behalf of the kids. The kids have the opportunity of lending books that will be available and are to be returned right after use. With this project, Earth’s Haven Organization is making this dream a reality for the kids based on the knowledge that the idea of the library was essentially requested by the kids themselves.

With all these indeed said and done, it is apparent that Earth’s Haven Organization is making a huge difference in communities and with time, their goodwill will spread to other parts of Lagos, eventually to all nooks and crannies of Nigeria and ultimately the world. Abiola Awosika is a true diamond in the rough.

Notwithstanding her personal losses and survival triumphs, she has been able to identify herself not with what she has got and those she has lost along the way, but with the notion and desire to give back and bless   the lives of those who seem like they can totally relate to her and her life story.

Being a writer, you get to want to express yourself with big English words and profound sentences, but meeting Biola taught me not to over think some few things in life but to surrender to the words of the heart and that is exactly how I’ve written this piece. For even if our heart tells us to, who are we to question it. They say stars can be seen in the skies at night, but I know a Nigerian star right here on this planet breathing and shining with so much life and her name is Abiola.

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This I Know a Nigerian Star article was written by Fisayo Agunbiade, a 21 year old Economics student at the University of Lagos. She has a passion for reading, and writing is her best form of self-expression.

She also enjoys watching movies and hanging out with friends.

You can contact Fisayo via:

Phone number- 07035389322

Twitter handle- Yo_its_fis

Blog website- Inameyouyasmin.blogspot.com

Email- Fisayoagunbiade@gmail.com