TEDx Ohio State University

On Saturday, February 24, I attended the TEDx event at the Wexner Center for the Arts hosted by the TEDx student organization at Ohio State. Although I was only able to stay for two performances, I was highly impressed with the speakers I listened to along with the list of other speakers performing at the event. At the event, I heard from two speakers: Harvey Blakeman and Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine. The first speaker, Harley Blakeman, discussed his incredible life story and how trauma from his childhood, the death of his father and mother’s drug addiction, lead him into the world of drug use and drug trafficking. He was arrested at the age of 19 and sentenced to prison in Georgia. After being released from prison, Blakeman moved in with his grandmother and started working minimum wage jobs to get back on his feet. Eventually, he decided to apply at Columbus State Community College, and soon after transferred to Ohio State, where he graduated with a degree in business from the Fisher College. Due to the difficulty of finding jobs after college with a criminal record, Blakeman is now a social entrepreneur and founded HonestJobs.co to encourage employers to adopt hiring policies that are more accepting and lenient towards former criminals. It was incredible to hear his story and everything that he had overcome and definitely put things into perspective for me in my own life. Although it’s not directly related to international affairs, I am curious to learn more about the societal attitudes toward those with criminal records in other countries because the issue of helping criminals get adjusted back into society is something that applies around the world. His talk allowed me to realize that I am incredibly privileged in my own life to come from a supportive family, and he also helped me understand that making mistakes is part of being a human; it will not prevent you from succeeding later on in life.  

I also was able to hear Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine speak for the second time this year, and I was blown away by her words yet again. Jamal-Eddine is a student at Ohio State and spoke about a program she created for incarcerated male youth that encourages them to use poetry and hip hop to express their emotions and hardships. She performed one of her own poetry-rap routine and discussed the maltreatment of women in society, and it almost brought me to tears. Sabrina also talked about her time abroad in Ethiopia where she studied international healthcare systems and how they differ from the United States, and she hopes to eventually pursue a PhD in nursing in order to effect political change in the realm of healthcare in the United States. Sabrina’s speech was highly informative and relevant to international affairs because she discussed some of the comparisons between the countries in which she has studied and she hopes to advocate for underrepresented communities in the future. I was incredibly inspired by all the work she has done to educate herself about underrepresented groups and use that knowledge to help improve their lives. Her work reminds me that in order to fully understand and advocate for a group, you must be immersed within their life – being a bystander or serving them based upon your own preconceived notions of the group won’t cut it. I am grateful that I attended the TEDx event because it inspired me about my own future and the things I can achieve if I put my mind to it!

 

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