5 years! 5 years of advocacy, activism and life! 5 years of love, laughter and celebration!
Yes, this month, Heartminders Societal Advancement Initiative completes 5 long years of blogging, teaching and mentorship. It has come a long way from being an amateur relationship blog to much confident and passionate platforms for healthy relationships of today! It’s been a wonderful, adventurous and beautiful journey with many ups and few lows. Who would have imagined that the blog born out of boredom and necessity would complete 5 impactful years! Not me!!! Never in zillion years!
It was January 2012, after almost 9 years in the banking industry, I’d taken the much needed break to get a less stressful job that will allow me attend to my family and children who were growing with the speed of light. I then called my very good friend Samad Biobaku, we sat together at sweet sensation Opebi, Lagos to discuss a few things that were on my mind about having a website, blogging and print media generally and that was how Heartminders.blogspot.com was birth. He left me with no option of looking for job, in clear words he said “Funke, you need your own thing”. After spending long hours on phone calls back home with another brilliant and ever-ready-to-listen friend of mine, JAIYEOLA Wale Balogun, spending some time reading books and then some more hours flipping relationship magazine and surfing the Web for blogs, myself and Wale concluded the blog will be named Heart-Menders, then Heartminders.
What happened next was so embarrassing, for 3months, no one but me, myself and I was reading my own blog. No one told me I could link my posts to social media platforms to gain readership, but, like they say in the corporate world, I learnt on the job. Slowly but surely, Heartminders blog became a daily dose for her readers. The journey so far has been full of joy, lot of happiness that comes with doing what you love and trained to do, extremely adventurous and drenched with so much of love and support from the readers! Thank you my dear readers, friends and family, who have made this virtual space a happy place. A place not just to write about relationships, but also to share our common interest and passion for love, Sex, marriage and life!!! It’s you, my dear readers, and your love and support that has helped to shape the future of Heartminders from just a blog to an NGO.
By December, 2012, thanks to your comments, feedback, suggestions and encouraging words, a child of necessity, ‘Heartminders Project’ came to life following requests and questions on sex and sexuality from teenagers who have been reading my posts. I immediately saw the need for a life modelling campaign and with Jaiyeola Wale Balogun by my side, we drafted plan of action, letters to appropriate authorities and project Wise-up; coined out of the slang ‘What’s up’ started. Today, we’ve been to over 70 schools (Both public and private) in Lagos state.
As we progress and the need arises, together with active volunteers like Olayemi Olanrewaju Wemimo, Shakeerah and Esther Onifade (Relocated to Paris with Family) , we began to separate campaigns and activism from the sex education program in secondary schools i.e TAALK and HAAROSA.
We also formed Heartminders youth Club with only five members that has grown to 17,000 and about 120 requests in process. Shakeerah Bello at this point became the Cordinator in charge of the youth club while I manage other projects.
Under the youth club umbrella, we’d done seminars, conferences and mentorship programmes, we’ve made our youths volunteer for other NGOs to mention a few.
So this thank you comes deep from my heart and I am humbled to receive this kind of love and support. As someone quoted “I would love to thank you from bottom of my heart but for you my heart has no bottom”. Thank you, once again!