Grace Ajayi walked up to the microphone, overcome with emotion. As a founding member of Young Voices, she remembered being one of just six youth in a dingy church basement. That was 11 years ago, before she got her Masters in Public Health from Boston University, before she had traveled across Africa championing healthcare for its most vulnerable people.
And now, here she was, about to speak at the 2
nd
Annual Founders Society Event—an event to honor Young Voices’ major donors who are the backbone of the organization’s success. Donors who have been there since the beginning, ensuring Young Voices and its youth have a strong foundation.
Grace took a deep breath, and began:
“
I am one of the founding members of Young Voices. It is amazing to see how much Young Voices has grown.
I was awarded the Ujima Scholarship of Northeastern University in fall of 2008. I received this scholarship because of my work with Young Voices and the belief in my potential to be an agent for positive change. While at NEU, I had the opportunity to work Cape Town, South Africa as a 2012 Presidential Global Scholarship recipient, where I volunteered in local health facilities.
I went on to receive my Masters in Public Health, and have had the opportunity to pursue my passion to improve health care delivery for the world’s most vulnerable populations. I received fellowships to work with the United States Agency for International Development and the State Department to travel the world providing monitoring & evaluation support to improve HIV health programming in Senegal and, most recently, Tanzania.
Young Voices has been such a huge influence in my life and taught me how to be a leader in the classroom, my community, and the organizations I have worked with. From public speaking to advocacy, Young Voices introduced me to the skills needed to become a champion for health equity, both domestically and internationally.
Her voice broke as she said:
I am a major donor because I believe in the potential of inner-city youth to be the catalysts for positive change in their local communities. I am an example, when given the tools and the opportunity, youth can become confident, engaged leaders who transform every aspect of their lives and are dogged in their pursuits to be the change they would like to see in the world.
We give our most heartfelt thanks to Grace and to all our donors.
You are the ones who give of yourselves--- so that youth will become the leaders our world desperately needs.
From the bottom of our hearts, we thank all of the members of the Young Voices Founders Society, who give $1,000 or more to the organization on an annual basis.
