About Me

 

me

Hello! My name is Ayobami Balogun, I am a freshman at The Ohio State University who is currently undecided BUT is planning on majoring in Public Health and double minoring in Business and Theater. I fell in love with volunteerism and helping people less priviledged as I am, while I worked and volunteered at several non-profit organizations in downtown Columbus.  I first volunteered at a soup kitchen called Faith Mission, it gave me the opportunity to converse with a lot of the people we fed and not just see them as homeless but as dynamic human beings with whom homelessness doesn’t define as a whole. At Planned Parenthood,  I worked as a liaison between my fellow peers in high school and Planned Parenthood health professionals with which I taught young girls at inner-city schools about sexual and reproductive health issues. I  also served as a neutral, non-judgmental ground  in which my fellow peers could safely ask any questions they had. Lastly,  I  volunteered at the Physician Care Connection Clinic, a free clinic that completely runs on volunteers and tries to provide medical care for underserved patients who can’t afford proper healthcare. I worked as the vision screening liason and I assisted in the free vision screening tests.

Currently as a freshman in college, I serve as a committee representative on the Diversity and Inclusion Commitee of the Undergraduate Student Government and as a general body member of MUNDO and the African Youth League(AYL).

As someone who grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, a global-south country, mental-illness was seen as a social taboo and the government has given  an abysmal effort in trying to support a change in the public’s perception. As a result, many mentally-ill people are abandoned by their families and left homeless, so in terms of my future goals, I hope to someday work as a spokesperson and creator of a non-profit hospital that treats mentally-ill patients in global-south countries.