IAG – Dr Princess Olufemi-Kayode

International Advisory Group Profile

Dr Princess Olufemi-Kayode

Human rights activist and Founder, Media Concern Initiative for Women & Children

A survivor of child sexual abuse, Dr Princess Olufemi-Kayode realised the impact of such abuse on individual children, women, family, community and society at large. This led to her raising public awareness and seeking institutional support to meet the needs of abused children and to prevent the long-term effects of abuse from seeping into the health, safety, and productivity of Nigerian society.

Thus, Media Concern Initiative for Women & Children (MediaCon) – a non-governmental-organisation working passionately to provide innovative solutions to prevent child sexual abuse and crisis provision in Nigeria, Africa and the world – was born in 2000. MediaCon has worked directly with more than 500,000 children and 200,000 adults. It has built capacity, working with more than 2048 professionals from different sectors of society, including criminal justice, education, religion and community, in an effort to get the adult community to take responsibility for prevention of child sexual abuse and adult gender based abuse.

Dr Princess has worked directly with more than 22,000 individual cases since 2005. A thoughtful and forward thinking human rights activist, she has pioneered sexual violence response in Nigeria. She mentors and coaches more than 40 organisations and 50 individual survivors working in the field, supporting and encouraging more organisations to join in the prevention of and response to sexual violence.

Her fight against child sexual abuse and adult sexual violence in Nigeria has led to her being accorded international recognition. She was awarded the prestigious ASHOKA Fellowship in 2007 by ASHOKA for Public Innovators, an international organisation based in the United States (https://www.ashoka.org/fellow/princess-olufemi-kayode). She became an Alumnus of the International Visitors Leadership Program of the United States Government, after visiting five States to study the US response to ‘Combating Trafficking in Persons – from the Lenses of Sexual Violence’ in 2008 – this greatly impacted her work on sexual and domestic violence. The University of Western Cape, South Africa awarded her an Honorary Doctorate Award in Public Health in 2010. She received an International Woman of Peace Award in 2012 (http://www.womenspeacepower.org/pastawardwinners.html).

Dr Princess is a Sexual and Gender Based Violence Expert with Criminal Justice Psychology background, Forensic Interviewer, Victim Advocate, Trauma Management Counsellor, Sexual Violence Response Strategist and Child Protection Specialist. An international speaker, she is a Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and a Practitioner of Family Systems Engineering Practitioner (FSE).