Olorunfunmi Adebajo-Olafimihan, a strong advocate of education for all and gender equality, is the founder of Kindle Africa Empowerment Initiative. She is passionate about touching lives and making people smile. In this interview by YEJIDE GBENGA-OGUNDARE, she speaks on her experience in working with poor communities, fighting for education and gender equality among others.
You usually work with vulnerable communities like Makoko despite the challenges people associate with this, what is your experience in these communities?
It’s been both interesting and heartbreaking. Extreme poverty makes people behave in ways you cannot imagine and makes them become very dependent on aid to the point of suffocation. I have seen a young girl become a prostitute at about 15 years old. Our organisation was very interested in sponsoring her education but, she didn’t have much family support and her family was very poor. I have also seen some of our beneficiaries from that community gain admission into university and some have started their businesses. For a lot of the abuse cases we have handled, I have learnt to divorce my emotions from the work as this gets in the way of critical thinking. Beyond poverty, culture and religion also has a lot of role to play in the marginalisation and abuse of women in these communities. Terrible widowhood practices, domestic violence, financial abuse, forced marriages and insistence that females need not be educated are some of the challenges that I have faced. But so far, it has been worth it. My thought is that our achievement cannot be measured by numbers alone but mostly by the impact we have made in the lives of the people that have come in contact with our organisation.
What motivates you despite the challenges you mentioned?
Despite the emotional and physical strain that my work entails, I have seen diamonds come out of rubbles; the before and after images of empowering a young woman with skill is amazing. She is able to stand up for herself and fend for her children; she becomes ‘qualified to speak where she would not have dared to. I have seen leaders being made and lives being rebuilt. A girl whose future would have been uncertain because of a teenage pregnancy now owns her own sewing machine and makes money through legitimate enterprise; she has started training other girls. These beautiful stories are what motivate me to do more.
Have these efforts given you any recognition?
I was one of the 100 Nigerians selected to meet with President Barack Obama in 2016 under the Young African Leaders Initiative of the U.S Government. In addition, in 2018, I was selected for the Emerging African Leaders Fellowship of the Nelson Mandela School of Governance in South Africa.
When did you start Kindle Africa and what does your organisation stand for?
Kindle Africa Empowerment Initiative is a non-governmental organisation which was established in 2016 with the aim of improving access to education and advancing gender equality in urban slums and rural communities. This goal is achieved through three main activities. The first is providing scholarship for indigent students, the second is providing vocational and life skills for vulnerable women so that they can fend for themselves and send their children to school and the third is through our recently established ICT centre which was launched by Ambassador Mary Beth Leonard, the Ambassador of the United States of America, to provide basic digital literacy skills to young girls in Isolo community, Lagos. We provide micro-loan facilities and start-up funds to buy tools so that they can establish themselves and we also provide them with internship opportunities, so that they can have a feel of the real business world.
What is the inspiration for establishing Kindle Africa?
I believe strongly that education is a major instrument in solving the poverty pandemic in Nigeria and that improved economic empowerment of women will result in an increased prosperity at the family, community and national levels. I was inspired to set up this organisation when I went to Makoko- Yaba Lagos and saw humans living in deplorable conditions on heaps of refuse and in overpopulated rooms on the filthy murky waters. I saw hundreds of children milling around during what should have been school hours and I spoke with a couple of women only to realise they do not have any form of skills for employment. I also found out that most of them lacked information about how to process education for their children. And may I say unfortunately for me and fortunately for my passion for humanity, I was out of paid employment at the time, so I just thought it was appropriate to step in and bridge the gap for these women and their children during my break from formal employment.
What are some of your achievements and contributions at Kindle Africa since it was established?
In 2016 we started by providing medical assistance and feeding outreaches to familiarise ourselves with the community and at the same time gain the trust of the people. In 2017, we established the Centre for Women’s Integrated Education which provides a combination of basic literacy and numeracy with vocational skills such as fashion designing, Adire production etc., it is worthy of note that the land was donated by one of the community elders, Chief Bawo Eliu, we got professional advice and some monetary donations from some of my friends on Facebook. Due to the demand of basic numeracy and literacy skills by the young women mostly between ages 15 and 25, who had never been to school, we established an adult education centre on the Makoko waterfront. This was an evening school that allowed them go about their daily activities in the morning and now learn in the evening; we taught them English Language using their local dialect and through songs and rhymes. It was quite an interesting experienced. After realising that several of our girls could not finish their vocational training due to forced marriages and rape, we established the short skills centre to provide the girls with four to six-week courses,which could easily fetch them money upon completion. Apart from these we’ve embarked on various programmes, some of which include community-based advocacy against rape and other forms of gender-based violence, and then there is the community mentoring project which was a catch them young strategy to ensure that both boys and girls in the Makoko community complete their school and then serve as peer mentors to other teenagers in the community.
Let us talk about finances, how do you get funds for the various social and economic empowerment programs that Kindle Africa carry out?
For now, our organisation is dependent on grants and donations but for sustainability, we have started working on selling some of the items we produce and engaging some of our women to provide services for the public.
As a wife and mother, how do you balance work and family?
I have a daily routine of spending time with God before starting my day. I acknowledge I am not a machine, so I do what I can and ensure to rest when I should.
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