Dr. Dayo Olomu, who was last year inducted into the Nigerian Diaspora Hall of Fame as one of the 100 Most Influential Nigerians in the Diaspora Globally, was recently bestowed the award of “Diaspora Man of the Year 2019” at the NELAS Academy Awards which took place recently at NICON Luxury Abuja.
According the organizers, he was given the award because he has “demonstrated professional excellence and highest standard of ethical conduct in his position as a community development icon”.
The award, interestingly, is Dayo Olomu’s 157th award and honour since 1992 and the fourth this year.
Olomu, it would be recalled, started out as a mentor in the sixth year of the Southwark Black Mentor scheme on October 30, 1997 and since then has mentored over 2,500 people in both UK and Nigeria. He has also turned his worthy selfless service of enhancing professional lives into that of a philanthropist, donating his time and career in service to less privileged members of society.
An admirer of the give-back attitude, Olomu, in recognition of human responsibilities, inter-connection and inter-relations, volunteered and completed the Flora London Marathon to raise money and create awareness for leukaemia in 2007 and in April 2008 he completed the Flora London Marathon again to create awareness and raise funds for Hearts of Gold Children’s Hospices, the first children’s hospice and respite care facility in Nigeria.
In March 2010, he again completed the Fleet Half Marathon to create awareness and raise funds for Wish for Africa and in August 2011, he skydived to create awareness and raise funds for the Desmond Tutu Foundation. He also completed the Croydon Half Marathon in 2013 to raise funds for the homeless people in Croydon.
On March 24, 2015, he participated in one of the most enduring challenges in UK, the 100km London to Brighton Challenge, to raise money to purchase wheelchairs and disability aids for disabled people in Nigeria. It took him 30 hours to complete the task.
In 2016, he launched the Dayo Olomu Foundation (DOF) in Lagos and offered mentoring opportunities to 1,000 youths at the occasion. DOF’s vision is to raise transformational leaders, mentor professionals, empower youths and support the less privileged members of society, especially women and children.
As of today, DOF has offered mentorship and support to 1,500 youths, provided financial support to 100 people, mostly women, reviewed more than 500 CVs and assisted 100 people to find employment. In addition, the foundation has donated soft toys to two orphanages in Lagos. In the UK, the DOF is involved in feeding the homeless people in Croydon, Surrey at The Queen’s Gardens through the Nightwatch charity.
On Monday, October 28, 2018, Dayo Olomu joined big-hearted business and community leaders who pledge to sleep outdoors for one night at Lord’s Cricket Ground London on Monday, October 29, 2018 to raise awareness and sponsorship from their business contacts and friends to fight homelessness and poverty in the City. They raised £80,000.
Said Olomu: “I am humbled and grateful to the organizers of NELA awards who found me worthy of Man of the year award. I am happy that I am able to restore belief to many people who have lost it, vision to those who can no longer see and cure many people who suffer from possibilities of blindness.
“I am delighted to be a noble warrior who is winning in different aspects of my life. Winning as described by Israel’s ‘Winning Guru Yehuda Shinar in his book “Think Like a Winner” is someone’s ability to maximise his or her potentials even when under pressure and in competitive situation, while demonstrating constant improvement”. The truth is that I have worked harder on myself than my job. I got this advice from Jim Rohn.
“My legacy is, when I get to the end of my life, I want to know that my life counted for something, that long after I am gone, somehow my impact will live on. I want to know that I have done all that I could to make this world a better place by positively enhancing the lives of those around me and helping thousands, if not millions, become who they desire to be and achieve what they thought was impossible. I want to know that I gave everything my best shot. I maximised my potentials and stretched myself to the limit. Most importantly, that I served God and I was a good husband and father.”
Dayo Olomu currently supports three charities – Focus on Disability Foundation, a UK registered charity that provides mobility aids to the physically challenged people; Croydon Nightwatch, which empowers and assists thousands of homeless and vulnerable people to turn around their lives, from being homeless and unemployed to re-settling and providing them with a stable, enriched life and FoodBank, a non-profit, charitable organisation that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough food to avoid hunger.
Credit: theyesng.com
