An international student from the University of Lynchburg is spending two months this summer serving others through an internship with the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty, an organization that combines education and community service.
Oluwatimilehin “Timmy” Mayowa ’27, a public health major from Osun State, Nigeria, is working as a community health worker at the Rescue Mission of Roanoke’s Fralin Free Clinic. The clinic, located about an hour from Lynchburg in Roanoke, Virginia, serves people who are experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness.
Among other things, he helps enroll new patients and complete initial health assessments. He also works in the mission’s food pantry and goes into the field with Rescue Mission’s medical street outreach team.
After he graduates from Lynchburg, Mayowa, who is minoring in neuroscience, wants to work for the World Health Organization. He said his experiences at the clinic will be “incredibly valuable for my future career as a public health expert focusing on health policy management.”
He added that he is getting “firsthand exposure to the health care needs of vulnerable populations, which is crucial for understanding the real-world implications of health policies” and “practical experience managing health care systems and ensuring access to essential health services, which aligns perfectly with my ambition to influence global health policies in general.”
Mayowa said taking Dr. Todd Olsen’s Dimensions of Health and Wellness class in the fall of 2023 helped prepare him for the internship, but he is sometimes “drawn to tears” by some of the stories he hears from clients.
“I couldn’t believe people are really going through so much,” he said. “I’ve heard the possible traumas and problems [people] go through, but it was my first meeting [with] people going through all those things firsthand.
“I had a conversation about it with my boss and I just knew I had to be prepared for the worst stories or else I would practically be crying for the whole community instead of actually finding a possible solution to the situation.”
Despite the challenges, Mayowa described the opportunity to work at the clinic as “once in a lifetime.” He said he looks forward to using what he’s learned there to help his home country “thrive above all obstacles.”
Mayowa will speak about his internship experiences at SHECP’s annual conference, which will occur later this month at Georgia State University.
Lynchburg is a member school of SHECP, which offers summer internships for cohorts of college students to work together on anti-poverty initiatives.
“Although these internships address the complex issues of poverty, these students experience learning opportunities in the fields of public health, food and housing security, economic development, education, immigration, policy and political science, law and public defense, coaching, and more,” Cindy Ferguson, Lynchburg’s SHECP internship director, said.
