By Boluwatife Oluwaferanmi Daramola Founder of Afárá
My name is Boluwatife Daramola, and my story is one of becoming- becoming aware, intentional, and becoming a bridge that creates numerous bridges.
Growing up, I didn’t always have the language to describe what I felt. Like many young people in most African homes, I learned how to function, how to smile, and how to keep going- even when things felt heavy inside, that was the norm. There were moments in my life when I struggled silently, questioning my worth, my life, and my place in the world. At a point, I experienced thoughts that made me realize just how important it is for people to feel seen, heard, and supported.
That realization became a turning point for me.
I began to understand that mental health is not just a personal issue, it is a shared human experience. Yet, in many communities, including mine, conversations around mental health are often avoided, stigmatized, or misunderstood. I know and I have seen how silence isolates people, and I knew I didn’t want anyone else to feel alone in what they were going through.
This is what inspired me to create Afárá.
Afárá is a Yoruba word that means “bridge” in English. It is more than an initiative, it is a movement built on three pillars: Communication, Community, and Creativity.
Through Afárá, I have led a campus wide Mental Health Summit that connected more than 100 attendees to mental health professionals and organisations to forge a trauma free future for generations to come, starting with our own becoming. The impact has been deeply personal and communal: students who once felt alone begin to open up, conversations continued beyond the sessions, and a culture of empathy and intentional commitment to growth is built.
My journey into pageantry also became a powerful extension of this advocacy. From competing on University platforms to national platforms, that gave me the room to amplify conversations around mental health and social wellbeing to wider and more diverse audiences. It taught me that influence is not just about visibility, it is about responsibility. I chose to use every stage, every platform, and every opportunity to speak for what has been silenced for far too long in us.
What continues to drive me is my belief in communal healing. That we can live and thrive in a world that we create rather than the one that has been handed to us. One safe space can prevent a silent struggle from becoming a breaking point. I am motivated by lived experiences, the stories I have heard, the people I have met but couldn’t help at the time and the constant self questioning, “if we all stay silent, then, who shapes the room for the ones to come after us”?
The impact I strive to make is simple but powerful: to let people know they are not alone, that their stories matter, to learn to question man made systems that act as the norm and to show that they can live a whole life without having to choose between sanity and acceptance
Today, I am building Afárá as a system that will outlive me- a ripple effect of awareness, healing, and connection that continues to expand across communities.
What can be prevented does not need to be cured, and that is my vision- not just to raise awareness, but to re-engineer how mental health is understood, expressed, and supported, especially among young people.
I believe that when we share our stories, we don’t just tell them, we transform them into bridges for others to cross.
And that is who I am becoming: a bridge between, between struggle and support, between what our society is mentally and what it could be, between who we are and who we can become.