Story By: Rahamatu-Lahi Zakaria || Sanatu Zambang
Starting her activism journey with Curious Mind at the tender age of 14 years, Amina Abdulai Yurilim is living her young adult life in serving humanity through love and compassion.
Introduced to Curious Minds by her friend Khadija, Amina became a youth advocate using her weekends to talk about issues affecting the youth and participating in activities that can bring change to her community.
This platform afforded her the opportunity to live out her dreams of serving humanity., either through sensitization on radio, write-ups, seminars, and other media. Her weekends with Curious Minds radio programs were centered around youth-related issues like sexual and reproductive health rights and responsibilities and other social issues.
Another thing Curious Minds did for Amina was to give her platform on Dance for Life to be a facilitator.
According to Amina, during one of their weekend program on radio, one of their bosses from Accra who had been around was marveled at her delivery and asked her to apply for the training to be a facilitator for Dance for Life. That was right after she completed SHS.
First, she was hesitant to apply for the training because she was not sure if her father would allow his baby girl to stay out for two weeks. But upon her boss speaking with her dad, he gave her the opportunity to go for the training.
As a facilitator, She was assigned to Nyohani Pressby Basic School to lead a discussion on reproductive health, rights and responsibilities, and other forms of abuse.
To climax the whole experience, Amina said she wanted to leave something behind to let anyone that comes to the school know that, Dance for Life was here. While her colleagues were busy organizing debates, drama, and other entertainment stuff, Amina together with her students drew a mural showcasing the different forms of abuse and how to seek help on the walls of the school.
After Dance for Life, Amina left for school to further her education at the University of Education, Winneba. But that still did not stop her from lending a helping hand and continuing with her activism. During vacations, she would go to the less endowed schools in her community to teach kids. She looks for schools that have fewer teachers to go and help in her small way.
After having been posted to Yumba Special School for the Intellectually disabled to teach, her love to serve humanity manifested again. The first thing she notices as a teacher at Yumba Special School for Intellectually Disabled was personal hygiene lacking among students. In her narration, Amina noted that some students do not wear underpants to schools, other do not bath or brush their teeth. while the girls during their menses do not wear pads.
So she took it upon herself to instill personal hygiene among her students. To achieve this, she had to consult her superior, and together, they provided a hygiene box in the school. In this box, they had a sponge, pad, soap, pants, singlets, toothbrush, shaving stick, and other toiletries to help these special needs students maintain good personal hygiene.
They were not just providing these essentials to these students but helping them to use them. For instance, she talks of how sometimes she had to bath these students in a way to show them how it is done or go as far as shaving their pubic hair both male and female.
The one question that kept her going was “what if it was me”. She says she does not blame parents of these special needs students because, at some point, they become frustrated for having to take care of them from the cradle to adulthood.
Currently, Amina works with YEFL, a youth-led organization operating in the northern part of Ghana. Its key objectives are empowerment and involvement of the youth of Ghana in productive activities for the individual, community, and national development
