From Baking Club to Change Agency – “Bake For Change” Ladies Take On a Journey of Touching Lives



Stefanie Moh, Ashim Uwaje, Nkemdilim Uwaje and Ngozi Coker



Bake For Change, a charity group started by four friends, Nkemdilim Uwaje, Ngozi Coker, Ashim Uwaje and Stefanie Moh,  who decided to turn their passion for baking into a change making agent, has made great strides in touching people’s lives positively with the several donations and projects the group has undertaken. With special attention to children and older people in government-funded homes for the less privileged and disabled, the group has reached hundreds of people with their message of love, a generous heart and warm smiles all the way.

It’s always great to see young people giving back to their society, no matter how small. That is why at BellaNaija, we are so proud of the charity initiative, Bake For Change, which has consistently touched people’s lives positively in various ways since it started. The story behind the commitment of the young ladies who started the group goes a long way to show that great things can be achieved and people’s lives can be changed even with just a small dose of care and compassion.

Giving Back

Last Christmas was brought alive for lots of people in less privileged and special homes in Lagos as members and friends of the charity group, Bake For Change, visited some homes around the state to spread the Christmas cheer. Armed with lots of goodies and 600 gift packs on December 26, they visited the Special Correctional Center for Boys in Oregun where some boys from the Special Correctional Center for Older Boys, Isheri met up with them. From Oregun, the team headed down to Modupe Cole Memorial Child Care and Treatment Home School, Yaba, the Special Correctional Center for Girls, Idi-araba, and the Children Transit Home, also in Idi-araba.

A Young Woman Soaring With Wings! Meet Nigerian Commercial Pilot, Imoleayo Adebule – Flying the Skies at 23

At 23, Imoleayo Adebule is one of Nigeria’s youngest female pilots. Intelligent, daring, and confident are three words that best describe the tenacity with which she passed through one of the most complex schools in the world – Flying School, to obtain her license as a Commercial Pilot. Imoleayo has excelled in a profession that is not only averse to people of her gender, but quite difficult even to people of the opposite sex. Having graduated at the top of her class at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, Kaduna, she now works with Aero Contractors where she is making giant strides. She shares her inspiring story with Adeola Adeyemo in this exclusive interview.

Starting Off                      

Imoleayo has always been a brilliant girl. Born on 25^th September, 1988 in Kaduna, she sailed through Primary and Secondary Schools faster than most of her peers. At 15, she was already through with her Secondary education at Royal College, Kaduna. Then came her search for an admission into the University where she wanted to study Mechanical Engineering. This was a very frustrating period for her as it lasted three years. “I finished in 2003 and I couldn’t get admission into the University,” she recalled. “I wanted to go to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, but between 2003 and 2006, I didn’t get admission.”

It was during her search for admission that she heard about an Engineering course being offered at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, Kaduna. “A family friend that works in Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, Kaduna, came over and told me about an Engineering course going on in the school, so I decided to apply for it. The name of the course is Air Frame and Power Plant,” she said.

To Imoleayo, becoming a pilot was “fate”. When she got to the College, she was disappointed to find out that they were no longer admitting students for the course. She was faced with the option of waiting for one more year or applying for the other available course which was Standard Piloting. Reluctantly, and with urging from her Mum and some Instructors at the College, she applied for the course.

Help, My Child is Fat!

Folake watched with a mixture of fear and embarrassment as her son, Chijioke, tried with obvious difficulty to play with his peers. A group of boys, about seven of them swarmed excitedly around a slide, making hasty steps up the ladder and screaming excitedly as they slid down.

Then it was Chijioke’s turn.

The plastic slide shook dangerously as he made clumsy steps up the ladder. Then he reached the top, swung his legs over with much difficulty and let herself go. Folake almost thought her son made it until there was a loud crack. Her worst fear had been relieved. The slide gave in somewhere at the bottom as some part of it broke off. With tears running down his cheeks, Chijioke went over to his mother, followed by jeers from the other kids.

At the age of nine, he weighed 70kg and his waist was 36 inches thick.

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year!!! 

I’m sorry this is coming kinda late, but Happy New Year all the same.

I want to particularly thank everyone who has given me support on my blog in the past year, especially my followers. GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

Thanks to everyone who has been a part of my blog, even when I haven’t been quite regular with my posts. I promise to do better this year.

Wish you all success and fulfillment this year!

One Lovely Blog Award

I’m so grateful to The Relentless Builder for this award. It’s my first since I became a blogger. Really warmed my heart. Lots of hugs and kisses from me to you.

Now, the rules

Link back to the person who gave you the award
Complete the form below
Tell seven random things about yourself
Nominate 15 bloggers


QUESTIONS:

Name your favorite color

Blue

Name your favorite song

I really don’t have one.  

Name your favorite dessert

Should be strawberry ice-cream

What pisses you off?

Bad breath, fake attitude.

When you are upset you

I just allow time pass. I usually feel less upset after clearing my head, having some time to think, and occupying my mind with other things.

Your favorite pet

Don’t have any really. But my neighbor has this cute little monkey and I like watching it jump up and down from my window every day.

 Black or white?

Definitely black. Black goes with everything.

Your biggest fear

Hmmm… can’t say that here

Everyday attitude

Make the best use of your time

Your best feature

I think that should be my smile. I know how to shine my teeth well well.  

What is perfection?

God Almighty

Guilty pleasure
Ice cream

7 Random things about myself:

• I am half-Nigerian, half-Ghanian 
• I’d watch a comedy over an action movie any day
• I love Indian movies too 
• I work from home most of the time. Can’t imagine having a 9 to 5 job.
• I don’t have a blackberry
• I daydream quite often
• I like my laptop (mini note) a lot

15 Blogs I am passing this award on to:

P.E.T Projects

Fiesty Pen

Chic Therapy

Enybee

Kitkat's tales

Lagy Ngo's World

Looking Glass of an Immigrant

Modern African Cusine

Musings..Illusions...Delusions

Natural Nigerian

Rhapsody Phoenix

Secrelilies

That 20something virgin

The smile of a Nigerian Scorpio

The diary of a fat naija girl

 

Revisiting the death penalty in Nigeria

Obed Sopuruchi was arrested during a police raid in Morogbo, Lagos, in 2004 at the age of 16. He only left his father’s roof for the first time in his life to spend his holidays in Lagos with an uncle after his senior secondary two examinations.

The police continued to extort money from the family to grant him bail and when the family could not afford to pay again, he was charged with armed robbery and was given a case mate, Sunday Edet, a 17 year-old whom he had never met in his life.

Both of them were allegedly shot in prison by the police, both were convicted and sentenced to death solely on confessional statements they were shown for the first time in court.

Prosper Ilada, a former driver in Benin, was pushed to steal his salary from his boss after he hadn’t been paid for three months. After repeated pleas for his salary, Mr Ilada, while returning from the bank with his boss after making cash withdrawal, distracted him for a while and took out the exact amount being owed him from the lump sum. He later went to his boss’s house to explain why he had to resort to such measures but was arrested and charged with armed robbery. He was subsequently sentenced to death and has been in prison for seven years.

These cases and other similar but largely unreported ones have heightened the call for the abolition of death penalty in Nigeria by citizens and human rights groups. Groups such as Amnesty International and Legal Defence and Assisted Project (LEDAP) have called for the abolition of the death sentence, and an immediate moratorium to be declared on all executions, changing all death sentences without delay to terms of imprisonment.

Chino Obiagwu, national coordinator, LEDAP, noted at a workshop on death penalty for journalists, recently, that most of the people on death row today in Nigeria are the poor who cannot afford defence lawyers or who cannot bribe the police.

“The death sentence has been unfairly applied to the poor, uneducated people,” said Mr Obiagwu. “Out of the 924 people on death row today, more than half of them cannot afford lawyers to take their appeal,” Mr Obiagwu added.

Changing Clouds

So, I decided to try my hands on fiction this time around. This story was inspired by my last post on ‘Do you know your genotype’. It was published on bellanaija.com. You can read it on the site here. Please let me know what you think about it, honestly. Your criticisms are very much welcome…

The ancient city of Ibadan didn’t seem to notice the day my first son, Adewale, died. The city was as busy as ever. Cloudless skies hung blue above the city as people went about their business. In the compound beside the hospital where my son died, a couple was being joined in a very loud traditional wedding ceremony.

The sounds coming from their loudspeakers almost drowned the doctor’s voice when he came to tell Dele and I the news. When he said “I’m sorry”, it sounded like “I’m coming”, but he still stood there and I wondered what he meant. But when he said “He is dead”, the words rang clearly and my sorrow, heavier than my weight, fell together with a thud on the cold terrazzo floor. 

As we left the hospital hours later in the rickety station wagon, Baba Femi, our landlord was kind enough to lend us, I wondered why the people on the streets didn’t notice that my precious son had just departed this world. They just carried on as if nothing happened. One bright-eyed boy, about the same age as Adewale, thrust a loaf of bread in my face but quickly retrieved it when he saw the look on my face.

“Gbemisola, Gbemisola!” Dele called beside me. I turned to look at him. He hadn’t cried yet but I knew the tears hung heavy in his eyes and would fall soon. He preferred to cry when he was praying.

“Maybe we should take all the children to the mountain this time,” he said, turning to look at me briefly. “We need to cast out the familiar spirits that have been disturbing them.”

Do you know your Genotype?

If you don’t, please go and do a test. And get to know the genotype of your spouse and family members. It’s really important. Below is a true story of a man (AS) who married a woman (AS) (didn’t know their genotypes before getting married) and had five children, all (SS). Sadly, they lost two of them….



Mr and Mrs Adewale and their three surviving children



A family’s struggle with Sickle Cell

The loss of a child is a traumatic experience most parents wouldn't wish for. It is usually prayed against, hoped against, with parents going to great extents to prevent a child's demise. But the loss of two children is as heartbreaking as it can be for a family.

Abel Adewale and his wife, Beatrice, have lost two out of five children to complications arising from sickle cell anaemia. As sad as their deaths were, what was even more depressing for the parents were the circumstances in which they died, circumstances they wished they were previously educated about and could have prevented.

Mr and Mrs Adewale got married in 1990, at a registry in Ilorin, Kwara State. At the time they got married, Mr Adewale was a primary school teacher at Ilorin, Kwara State; while his wife was a midwife at the Christ Apostolic Church Hospital, also in Ilorin. While Mr Adewale received his training at Teachers Training College, Osun State, Mrs Adewale only had her formal education up to secondary school and trained as a midwife in the church. At that time, neither of them had heard about sickle cell anaemia. They said they were oblivious of their genotypes and started having children soon after their marriage.

"I had never done a genotype test before marriage; we didn't do any medical test. We got married in a court in Ilorin," said Mr Adewale. The couple had their first child in July 1991, and four followed thereafter. However, as wonderful as the growth of their family was, their joy was marred by the sickly state of all five children.

"It was always sickness, sickness, complaining of sickness. Sometimes, all of them will be sick at the same time. Sometimes, it will be two or three of them," said Mrs Adewale.

Making a living from trash

A recent visit to the Olusosun Land Fill site where waste from thousands of homes and offices in Lagos is emptied gave me a sick feeling that hasn’t left me for several days. The sight of hundreds of people, wading deep into people’s trash, in search of items that could earn them an income is not what I expected to see.

The state of deprivation and unemployment in the economy can be brought alive in fewer pictures than that of people rummaging through waste at such sites daily. Was such a sad sight, seeing hundreds of people thronging a dump site for their daily bread….

Below is the article I wrote.

After hours of searching, dusting, bagging, and more searching, Moses Daramola was done for the day. He stretched his stiff back, made his way out of the dump, retrieved a sachet of water from his bag and washed his face. Then he settled down at a corner to go through his findings; a broken car radio, a pressing iron with a missing plug, a portable DVD player with a missing screen, several plugs, sockets, electrical parts and wires all at various levels of degradation. Satisfied with his findings, he stuffed them back into his backpack which had more than a few holes and stitches.

“Today is good.” Mr Daramola smiled to himself.

“Don’t look at these wires and sockets anyhow,” he told this reporter. “By the time I take it to all those people that sell electrical parts, I will be able to make some money.”

Mr Daramola is just one of the hundreds of people who, on a daily basis, throng the Olusosun dumpsite, the second largest landfill site in the state, for their source of livelihood. Among the tonnes of waste that is brought in by the Lagos State Waste Management Agency (LAWMA) trucks and other private waste managers, these people find items that could earn them an income.

The man who built a car

When Sunday Okpere was seven, he made toy cars using empty milk cans, short ropes and small twigs, which he happily dragged around the streets in his hometown in Edo State; while at the same time nursing the dream of building a real car.

Today, Mr Okpere drives a red and black car, which he named ‘Rock Auto,' around the streets of Lagos; a car which he designed and coupled from start to finish with locally-sourced materials.

Despite the death of his father and the attendant financial and emotional setback to the family, Mr Okpere said "making a car" was something he knew he wanted to do at a young age when he discovered his creative spirit.

"When I was a young boy, I used to make car with cans," said Mr Okpere, 35, who relocated with his family from Lagos to Edo State in the late 70's. "All my friends in my neighbourhood will gather around me and say I should make for them. From cars, I started making guns.Anything I was interested in, I tried to make on my own."

"In secondary school, my teacher in school asked me what I wanted to be in future and I said I want to be an engineer," he said.

A New Beginning

First of all, I’d like to say a very big thank you to everyone who has dropped by this blog or dropped a comment. Your kindness, support and appreciation means a lot to me. I love you all.

In order to improve the content and quality of this blog and eventually, for my personal and career development, I would be focusing more on what I love to do best – writing and journalism.

Contents of this blog would largely be based on fiction stories, reports, inspiring stories and events, writing events and competitions. And of course, since it is my blog, opinion pieces would also be a part of it :D

I hope you enjoy the new http://www.deolascope.blogspot.com/. Do keep dropping by again and again.

God bless you all!

Emotional farewell to Harry Potter series

I would surely miss the Harry Potter series. But surely not as much as the cast and the thousands of people who flooded into central London yesterday to say an emotional goodbye to the hugely popular series at the world premiere of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part Two.

Emma Watson, one of my favorite characters I must say, wiped away tears as her co-stars paid a final tribute.

BTW I love her gown…

Victoria Beckham, a few days to giving birth

Husband, David Beckham posted this picture of his wife on his Facebook page yesterday. There are now just days to go before she is due to give birth to her fourth child, a much-longed-for daughter.

She has booked into a private hospital in LA where she will give birth by caesarean on Sunday. The couple have three boys; Brooklyn, 12, Romeo, eight, and six-year-old Cruz.

Wishing them the best on Sunday….

Olu Jacobs wins Life Achievement Award

Nollywood star Olu Jacobs was given a standing ovation at the closing ceremony of the 15th Ecrans Noirs Film Festival, Saturday night of June 25, 2011 in Yaounde, Cameroun. He was applauded by the ecstatic audience as he mounted the stage to receive the Prix Charles Mensah (Ecran d'Honneur) for his outstanding life achievement as an actor of local and international success for the great impact of Nollywood in Africa.

Desperate to swim?

You don’t need a pool.... ha ha ha

Lady Gaga on the Runway

                                                     

As she models for Germany’s Top Model today.

Love u Gaga.... Always a drama queen

Fat Joe is no longer FAT

Rapper Fat Joe might have to look for a new stage name as he has shed a whole lot of weight. This is what he looked like before....

And this is what he looks like now in a recent video

He should change his name now to Slim Joe.

The fastest way to get 'six pack'

No need for any exercise, diet or pills... just get a ‘pack’ of your favourite drink.....lol!

Osama bin Laden dead

"The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda and a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of men, women and children," Obama said.

It is a major accomplishment for Obama and his national security team, after many Americans had given up hope of ever finding bin Laden.

A crowd gathered outside the White House to celebrate, chanting, "USA, USA."

Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, had repeatedly vowed to bring bin Laden to justice "dead or alive" for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people, but never did before leaving office in early 2009.

U.S. officials said that after searching in vain for the al Qaeda leader since he disappeared in Afghanistan in late 2001, the Saudi-born extremist was killed in the Pakistani town of Abbotabad and his body recovered.

21 year-old Nigerian kills Spanish lover

A 21 year-old Nigerian, Rafael Ikechuckwu, has been arrested for killing a Spanish man in Lagos whom he said was his lover. According to his account, he has been lovers with the middle aged Spanish man, Gafaru Anthony for more than two years before the incident occurred. Mr Anthony was in the country on the invitation of Mr Ikechukwu. He slashed his lover’s throat after a fight at the Goti Gate Hotel at FESTAC town where they had planned to lodge for one week.

A quarrel reportedly ensued between the lovers after they retired to their room. Mr Ikechukwu allegedly overpowered Mr Anthony during the fight and slashed his throat with a broken bottle. Police officers from the Homicide Department at Panti, Yaba, were invited to the scene, and they arrested Mr Ikechukwu. The body of Mr Anthony was taken to the mortuary for autopsy.

Read more here