After graduating from Harvard University and Stanford Law School, Afam Onyema turned down jobs from prestigious law firms with starting salaries of $160,000 to help realize his father's dream of opening a world-class hospital in Nigeria -- which will be called the Augustine Memorial Hospital.

Onyema's father is an obstetrician from Nigeria who moved to Chicago in the '70s. He hoped to one day found a hospital in Anambra, a state in southeastern Nigeria. But it was not something Afam seriously considered helping his father with, until hearing U2 singer Bono speak when he was at Harvard University in 2001. Bono, he told Harvard magazine, "really challenged my class to,  realize that because of our privileges, more was expected of us."

From there, Afam and his father started making plans for the hospital while Afam went to law school at Stanford. After graduating, he turned down lucrative job offers to help his father build the hospital, establishing the GEANCO Foundation to oversee the process.

As GEANCO's chief operating officer, Afam has recruited A-list celebrities such as actor Forest Whitaker, model Kimora Lee Simmons, actor Dijimon Hounsou, and Nobel Prize winners to raise awareness and money for the hospital.

Afam Onyema is making history ,  as a young philanthropist who took his Ivy League education and used it to help the less fortunate. Nigeria, a country with the largest maternal mortality rate in Africa, does not currently have an adequate health care system to address the issues facing its citizens. Onyema has been named to the New Leaders Council's "40 Under 40" list for his work with GEANCO.

What's next for Afam?

Onyema continues to work to help his father realize his dream by raising money and making plans for Augustine Memorial in Anambra State.

In his own words ,

"I didn't initially think I would do this as a career," Onyema told Harvard Magazine. "I thought I would help my father's dream come true and then move on to the next challenge. But to me this is the next challenge."

Very inspiring story. Yes we can!

Good, I hope his dream comes true.

we need more people like this man who are willing to build infrastructures for our nation

Let's see if a project like this can ever be started and successfully finished in Nigeria.

The Nigerian factor might destabilize this project.

Another educated nigerian beggar.
how can you be so rich and beg poeple in whose banks you stash your money?
We are seriously messed up!
I pray amadioha everyday for war. That will be the solution. A serious 21st century nigerian war that will scatter everything so we can seriously reconstruct ourselves.

^^^^

na ur family will scattered then u can start from scratch

ikeyman00:

^^^^

na ur family will scattered then u can start from scratch

oyel money go finish one day
one nigeria freak