RELIEF AFRICA NEWS
"My dream is to build a charity home for the needy children"
Founder of Relief Africa, a charity organisation based in London, Aderemi Adejokun, is one of the Nigerians among the 70,000 volunteers who worked tirelessly to make the recently-concluded Olympic Games a success. While Adejokun, who relocated to England eight years ago after spending 24 years in the US, is still part of the Paralympic Games, she has a novel plan concerning the kits she received from the organisers.
Although the volunteers, who managed every aspect of the games and the city, got no monetary rewards, Adejokun says they were pampered with shirts, shoes, pants, umbrellas, hats etc. These are souvernirs that many of the volunteers will like to keep as monuments. But Adejokun is planning to auction them.
“Everyday you come, they give you goodies in appreciation of your efforts,” she says. “So, community work is not about money. This is one of the messages I will take to Nigeria”. She notes that she will auction the materials to raise money which, according to her, she will use for charity work in Nigeria.
She adds, “That I have lived long here does not mean I have forgotten home. There is the need to assist indigent children, especially on their aspiration to go to school. That is the difference between Africa and this part of the world. While many out there are out of school because they cannot afford fees and educational materials, here, government has to beg them to go to school.”
On how she got enrolled as a volunteer, she explains that it was not everyone that applied that was chosen. She said, “I went for a series of interviews. I did a police check for them to know that you have no negative record. They had to see that you are a people’s person, someone who is able to smile and address people from different parts of the world. We went for a series of training that was very tough.”
Adejokun’s passion for charity got boosted recently when one of her daughters, Marian, recovered from Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a disease that burnt her skin months after taking a dose of eye drops. Now, alongside Marian and her other children, she performs popular musical brands at churches and social events, while helping orphanages, the elderly and people living with disabilities.
