Tolulope Sangosanya: It’s in my blood (30 Days, 30 Voices)

Before I was born and aware of who I am, I was already a GIVER. It was the reason I was born. It was the reason God chose my parents, linage and even country.

In most of my interviews, I have been asked how and when I started giving professionally. I most times than not talk about the girl I saw leading her father to beg and how she inspired my spirit to wake me up for my calling on earth. But in the last two week I have been given this charge to write, I have questioned myself if truly that was when giving really started with me. I decided to soul search and these are some of the findings I got.

My maternal grandfather died 18years before I was born yet his act of giving I reaped and I continue to reap in my twenties. For a man I never saw for one day, I worship the floor he walked.

My biological father feeds people every weekend. The poor in his community where he lives knows that food is guaranteed every weekend that my father is in Nigeria, and that gives them something to look forward to. I think it is the treatment he gives them that impresses me. He is a lawyer that eats on the same table sometimes dipping his hand in the same plate as the unemployed and the illiterates.

My mother owns a private school where some kids attend for free and some others on discount. She gives consideration to the poor who earns daily to pay their children’s fees daily.

My paternal ‘chic’ aunt gives at a go 5 pairs of shoes and clothes with tags on it to her nieces, pays the rent, pays school and the list goes on.

Didn’t I steal toys Robin Hood-style from my younger sister to give to my cousin because I felt my sister had more than enough and my cousin none when I was in primary 4?

So how could I have thought I started GIVING in my twenties? It had been in my blood, wired in my DNA, flowing in my veins, inherited from my parents, passed down from generation to generation.

Didn’t that great Hebrew text say ‘and everything was created according to its own kind….’? Before I was born and aware of who I am, I was already a GIVER. It was the reason I was born. It was the reason God chose my parents, linage and even country. He put me in the land that needs my gifting, my calling, my destiny can shine.

No man was created for nothing. No man was created to just come OCCUPY Nigeria. No man is unimportant. Man just need to discover purpose to be relevant.

And the very place to start is ‘…in the blood’!

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Tolulope Sangosanya is the founder of LOTS charity foundation which, since registration, has been able to cater to the hungry stomach of thousands of street kids and vulnerable children, feed the intellect of over a hundred children in ‘DUSTBIN ESATE’, relocated a family from ‘dustbin’ to ‘sanity’, serviced the people in basic health care services, not mentioning the clothing drive, fun days and celebrity visit to the DUSTBIN ESTATE.

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30 Days 30 Voices series is an opportunity for young Nigerians to share their stories and experiences with other young Nigerians, within our borders and beyond, to inspire and motivate them.

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

 

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