SE4/EP 43: Conversation with Titilayo Ogunbambi an Activist and Advocate against Gender Based Violence (GBV)

As I said during my conversation with Titilayo Ogunbambi, “When you are in the right part, the right people will come your way.” During my conversation with Dr. Ibrahim Puri on one of my podcast episodes on female genital mutilation, she mentioned Ogunbambi’s work on gender violence. Dr. Puri cited Ogunbambi’s publication titled Emerge, and she suggested that Titilayo would be an excellent candidate to discuss gender violence further. It is a privilege to converse with Titilayo Ogunbambi, a Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and Harmful Practices expert. Before diving into our conversation on gender violence, we talked about her family background and the immigrant experience as a student, a wife, and a mother raising children in a country quite different from Nigeria in terms of its diversity and the dominant American culture. We talked about some of the challenges she experienced as a new immigrant in America and the benefits of migrating to America. We further discuss the African brain drain and the impact on the development of our continuant. Ogunbambi is pursuing her Ph.D. candidacy at National Louis University, where her research focuses on the intersection of gender, violence prevention, and policy and advocacy. We talked about how has or how would obtaining her education in the US empower or enhance her activism on gender-based violence globally. We briefly touched on the role of women in Africa before coming in contact with Christianity and Islam and how the religion changed or obstructed the role of women. Our curiosity also extends to the role colonization and the European educational system have adopted impacted the role of women during its early stage. Bio: Titilayo Ogunbambi is Gender-based violence (GBV), harmful practices specialist, and development professional. She founded Boundless Hands Africa (https://boundlesshandafrica.org/), a nonprofit championing Gender-Based Violence advocacy in Nigeria. Since 2016, through various interventions, Boundless Hands Africa has advanced the health and well-being of women and girls of gender-based violence survivors by facilitating access to sexual reproductive health information/services and psycho-social support to survivors of sexual abuse living in underserved communities. She led these efforts through capacity building, education, sensitization programs, partnerships with service providers, and policy advocacy by leveraging technology and the media. As a UN Women Nigeria Beijing +25 Eaglet, she has collaborated with UNWomen Nigeria to execute various interventions to address the root causes of GBV. Boundless Hands Africa has also partnered with the American Conner Lagos Nigeria to implement GBV prevention, intervention, and rapid response programs. She currently serves as an International Humanitarian Law Youth Action Campaign Regional Coordinator at the American Red Cross ARC of Chicago & N Illinois Region. Ogunbambi has over ten years of experience designing and implementing programs focused on economic empowerment, sexual reproductive health/rights, and social justice in local, national, and international capacities and management experience across multiple social policies and health market services. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Administration from Jos, Nigeria, and an MA in International Development and Policy from the University of Chicago. She is a Doctorate student at National Louis University Chicago, Pursuing a Ph.D. in Community Psychology. Her work is recognized as a multiple award-winning girl-child advocate, 2022 UN Women Chicago USA Gender Equality Champions Award winner, One Champion 2019, YALI RLC Fellow 2016, UNWomen Beijing +25 Eaglet 2020, and a 2021 Mandela Washington Fellow selected by the United States government as an outstanding young leader from Sub-Saharan Africa. She is the Author of; “Emerge”; Rising from the shadows of Sexual and Gender-Based. Website: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKgMvCY4EmLPJuXVGnDlEBQ