Kindness and giving come naturally to Mrs Motunlayo Adefunke Sofowote, founder/president, Glowing Channels’ Foundation. In the past 15 years, she has been providing succour for the less privileged. Now, the 67-year-old woman, who is battling with cervical cancer, needs help to live. RAYMOND MORDI reports that her friends are organising a photo exhibition to raise funds for her treatment.
A photo exhibition is being put together to raise funds to save the live of Mrs. Motunlayo Adefunke Sofowote, founder/president of Glowing Channels Foundation, a non-profit organization that has been providing succour to the less privileged in the society in the last 15 years. The exhibition, which is taking place under the theme, ‘She Lives On’, would open on May 4, 2014, at Freedom Park, Broad Street, Lagos, at 4 pm prompt and would run for one week. It is being organized by a group known as ‘Mrs Adefunke Sofowote Cancer-Fighting Fund Team’.
The woman has been critically ill since August last year and requires urgent financial assistance, to continue her treatment at the University Teaching Hospital, Lübeck (otherwise known as the UniversitatsKlinikum Schleswig-Holstein, UKSH), in the northern part of Germany, where she has been hospitalized. It was at the close of the year 2011, when she was preparing for her Glowing Channels Foundation annual charity concert, that she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, a deadly ailment that is said to be responsible for the death of one woman in every hour in Nigeria. As her treatment at the EKO Hospital, Ikeja, Lagos, progressed just before Christmas, she found that she was getting weaker.
For a woman who has been very active over the past few decades, as a writer, motivational speaker, philanthropist and a regular volunteer in a number of activities in the upliftment of humanity, it was a telling sign to slow down or shut down. The one fondly called ‘Mummy Sofowote’ has since found herself in life-threatening situations repeatedly.
She is currently receiving a series of medical treatment at the German hospital. Close friends and family have rallied round her so far, by constantly providing money to cater for her treatment. As a result, some measure of success has been achieved.
But a bigger amount of money, which is far beyond the scope of what her immediate family and friends can afford, is now required. The turn that her medical treatment has taken since August last year has taken the capacity beyond the scope of her immediate family and friends. According to her husband, Mr. Segun Sofowote, the renowned dramatist, writer and veteran broadcaster, “Every session of treatment she undergoes costs the equivalent of well over a million naira. We need now N25 million to pay for her hospital bills, another N5 million to pay for her medications and prescriptions and another N5 million to take care of her living expenses in Germany.” The costs themselves are threatened by the fluctuating rates of the foreign exchange market.
Mrs. Sofowote’s predicament is somewhat awkward. Not getting the required financial support at the right tie to continue her treatment seamlessly could be critical. She is being taken through a series of treatment regimes that would span over a long period of time. As a result, she is not expected back to Nigeria till about the end of next year.
“The exhibition is a creative way of raising the necessary funds for her treatment,” Mr. Charles Ayo Dada noted. Mr. Dada is the coordinator of the exhibition. “The idea is to give back something to the patrons,” he added. In his view, those who would support the cause of this exhibition would come in different categories. In his words: “Those pictures have their own appeal, so there are those who would buy because they love art. But there are those who may be moved to give more than the cost of those pictures, if they see it as a fundraising activity. There would also be those who would buy because of the theme of the activity, particularly because they know the woman at the centre of it all and they want to identify with the project.”
As a dedicated part-time photographer with longstanding experience, Mrs. Sofowote has quite a unique collection of photographs, out of which 40 have been selected for the exhibition. “We have had to go through a collection of photographs she had taken over the years, to select the ones we would put on display,” Dada noted.
Mrs. Sofowote, 67, is a passionate giver. Every December since 1998 (with the exception of the last one), she has remained committed to her annual Glowing Channels concerts, primarily to give succour to the needy and provide wholesome entertainment for families. Over the years, the likes of Kayode Olajide, the late Benjamin Aderounmu (better known as Kokoro), Bright Chimezie (a.k.a. Okoro Junior), Therese D’Avila, superior soprano from Ivory Coast, and groups like Notes and Tones, Seye Aluko’s Sound Foundation and Professor Mosun Obidike’s The Symphonic Voice from Ibadan, Oyo State, have featured at the concert. Glowing Channels, the humanitarian organization, was inspired by the memory of the late Chief Adeyemi Olusola Lawson, to revamp wholesome entertainment for the spiritual upliftment of people, as well as a vehicle to raise funds for the succour of the less-privileged in society.
As those who know her very well would readily attest, Mrs. Adefunke Sofowote is a warm, modest and elegant woman. As a writer, she provides rare insights. “I’m motivated to write from the deep well and wealth inside of me,” she told this writer after the launching of her fourth book, ‘366 Days of Soulful Planting’ in May 2009.
