Yolanda N. George-david, it’s all about a life of selfless service to humanity
HMore about Aunt Landa er academic sojourn through the likes of Har vard Medical School and University of Pittsburgh, to mention a few; gave birth to her career as a practicing Female Fertility Specialist cum Clinical and Relational Psychologist with a concentration in Child Development. Her last few years have however found her working with various schools and communities, mentoring and coaching professionals, non-professionals and families across the globe. With multiple Awards both local and International under her wings, Dr Yolanda N. George- David’s proficiency as a PRA- Personality Rebranding Agent leaves no room for questioning.
Where it all started
Growing up as compared to my circumstances was a blessing, it was a miracle. I was blessed with great support system, a very pleasant family, and I was protected. All I needed to do was just to listen to my parents’ instructions, and the truth is my father’s decision to get all those textbooks, creating this pathway, and laying the fundamentals of going through all of the journeys was a blessing to me. I never knew what it meant not to have your fees paid or not to have new uniforms or books. My needs were never my worries, and it’s my hope that they are never the worries of any child.
Have you always wanted to be a medical doctor?
Funny enough, again, my folks. I actually wanted to be a lawyer. The whole idea, the reason I wanted to be a lawyer was because, as a child, pre-teen, I was intentional and worried about the amount of injustice that I had seen and I wanted to defend the rights of people. Now, my parents, my mum being a Child Psychologist, had said out rightly, I could not even dig an argument with my siblings. I’m grateful for my primary residence, Female Fertility Medicine, which has allowed me understand and help as many as possible, whether as a doctor or with my status as Aunt Landa, my knowledge of Medicine has helped me save thousands of lives. So I’m grateful I listened to my parents and I became a Doctor.
Aunt landa bethel foundation The thing about the Aunt Landa Foundation is, before it became an official foundation here in Africa, I was just visiting for a bit, and my late friend said “all the work that you do with all these girls that were raped in Bagdad, I really think you need to speak to some of these teenagers in Africa, they really need it”, that’s when I decided, apart from my outreaches for the widows and everything I’ve been doing, to dig my feet in the sea of sexual abuse in Africa or ending up having to work with great people like Abimbola Fashola, Alibaba and all of these people, Lepacious Bose, Tim Godfrey, Lolo. However, at the very beginning, I was just going to do a conference, so I went on air and said ‘if you’ve been sexually abused meet me, I will be there (at) my usual catering for my orphan kids, meet me there. I was expecting two or three girls to show up, but we had 746 girls show up. That then became our first official Aunt Landa Bethel Foundation meeting. It was girls who had just been sexually abused, girls who were still stuck in their abuse and could not leave. Now, the truth is, I can’t say I sat down and planned to have this massive foundation, I just wanted to create a relief mechanism to help just one person. I just had to run after it and grow with it as the needs kept coming.
Aunt Landa market square Christmas of 2016, I reached out to Alibaba, and said to him “I get that we’re doing all of this awesome work within our walls, and I get that it’s good enough, but I feel that we need to reach out to more people, and I don’t want it to be dehumanizing to the receiver because, at that time, the way charity looked was dehumanizing to the receiver”. Alibaba asked me how I planned to do that, and I said to him “I wish we could have something like a traditional African market place where we had everybody come in, they buy stuff, and they select what they want, we can then say to them, “you don’t have to pay, you can go. It’s been paid by Love” and it took Alibaba less than thirty seconds to agree with it, even though he was worried that that was me coming up with another idea to create more debt. Later, Alibaba did a sketch of a currency, and in his words, “that’s the Aunt Landa currency”. Everybody coming into the market square would receive the said currency, so the children get to choose, they don’t have to know who Aunt Landa is, they come in, shop for free and pay with this currency. It’s actually free, and Kaboom, at that point, I was so excited that I could not even contain myself.
Do you see yourself as a human rights activist?
No, I do not. Although I have all these awards that call me that, my position at the foundation was actually the Servant-in-charge, I know I was created to create relief. I see myself as relief merchant; I sell happiness for a living. People come to me with their pain and by God’s grace, they leave happy. So, I don’t see myself as a human rights activist, I’m just a relief merchant.
What is the greatest lesson life has taught you?
For me, my greatest lesson is the fact that working as a relief merchant, I have been to too many burials, I have walked with people through their darkest moments, and one of those times, I was really ill and I could barely stand, I noticed that every tomb stone had a dash, so you see whoever was born in 1919-1954, that dash was there.
As I stared at that dash, it hit me that all I have done with my life, that’s all that is going to be in the dash. Eventually we’ll all end there, but what choices are we going to make?
How do you balance work and family?
I have been blessed with a king who understands that this is who I am and what I live for and family has been very supportive but again, everything is about priority. For me, no matter how busy someone is, what matters, matters. The way I balance it is that my family is everything. And because of the work I do, whether as a Doctor or as a relief merchant at Aunt Landa, I make sure that I sometimes delegate, but I never put my family second.
What would you want every girl, lady, mother to know?
I want every girl, woman, mother and wife, to know that you are capable, and you are enough. Your dreams are valid, you can be anything.