From the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to recent activism for gun safety, young people have been a driving force behind change in the United States. These movements are inspiration for Chinenye Bosah, who is doing her part in improving the lives of young people in Ohio.
Bosah, a second-year undergraduate student of environmental public health, was invited to the 2017 Propel Ohio Collegiate Leadership Summit at The University of Akron in November. She was joined by hundreds of other college students from colleges across the state to learn what factors lead to childhood poverty, and what she can do to address it in her own community.
“A big takeaway for me was learning about redlining and red zoning that began in the 1960s,” Bosah says. “It put certain neighborhoods at a higher disadvantage; it’s still having a negative impact today and contributes more to childhood poverty than I previously thought.”
Propel Ohio is a leadership program that promotes civic engagement and leadership among undergraduate students. Partners of the program include Ohio Campus Compact, Ohio United Way and the Office of Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who was one of the guest speakers at the summit.
Bosah and other central Ohio undergraduate students gathered for a regional summit at Ohio State in February. They discussed ways to get involved in their communities and mentor children living in poverty.
"Sometimes I feel like people think ‘I have to do something really big where I’m helping fifty plus people to make a difference,’” Bosah says. “But it can be a butterfly effect. Making a difference for one person can help them make a difference in someone else’s life and so on.”
Bosah has since taken the lessons she learned at Propel Ohio to middle schools in Columbus. She volunteers for 1Girl, a program through which she visits a school in a disadvantaged neighborhood once a week to mentor female students on topics ranging from leadership to friendship.
“It’s mostly to be a mentor and constant figure in their life; to show that people do care,” Bosah says. “It’s also to be an example — because the school I go to this semester is all girls of color, so I think it’s cool for them to see that they can go to college, too.”
