Women’s Rights Advocate Oluwafunmilayo Ayobami Oni of Iranwo Foundation is our #BellaNaijaWCW this Week!

#BellaNaijaWCW this week is a voice for the marginalised, a poverty alleviation champion, and an advocate for women’s rights.

Oluwafunmilayo Oni is the founder of Iranwo Foundation, “a non profit whose aim is to provide equal access to economic opportunities for women, through access to leadership and entrepreneurship skills to women and girls in rural areas,” thus promoting economic empowerment and financial inclusion for women.

In the last four years Oluwafunmilayo has been involved in initiating, developing and executing sustainable strategies for development and poverty eradication in disadvantaged communities in Nigeria, such as Oru refugee camp (an abandoned refugee camp in Ogun state), Ifo local government, Mushin, and Makoko floating slum.

Iranwo Foundation currently provides training on skills such as Tie & Dye and Soap making for women in these communities and has trained over 400 women in 4 communities so far.

It also gives business advisory services to the women, as well as provide them with micro loans to kickstart their businesses.

While studying for her Bachelors degree (Economics and Education) from Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), Oluwafunmilayo was an active member of Enactus TASUED; Enactus is a global campus based organisation that provides support for students to solve community problems using sustainable models.

Between 2017 and 2018, Olufunmilayo was Country Director at Catering For Africans in Need (CAIN), where she was working to break the vicious cycle of poverty in among families in urban slums by providing access to quality education for children living in slums and healthcare for all.

She also coordinated programmes for Kindle Africa Empowerment Initiative. Kindle Africa is a nonprofit situated at Makoko, which provides empowerment programmes for women and access to education for children in this community.

Oluwafunmilayo is “bridging the economic gap between both genders, one community at a time through policy advocacy and the provision of business empowerment opportunities to end extreme poverty among women,” and we are so proud of her and her work.