OLUWASEUN KOLAWOLE – Conflict Resolution and Violence Prevention Expert

Oluwaseun Kolawole is an impact-driven Peacebuilder deeply committed to making Peacebuilding relatable and actionable through Peace Education and Advocacy. With four years of experience in this field, she has wholeheartedly embraced the People-Powered Peacebuilding approach, firmly believing that only peaceful individuals can build and sustain peaceful societies.

Her approach centers around empowering people to become active contributors to peace. She firmly believes that lasting peace begins with individuals who possess the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to resolve conflicts in nonviolent ways. Through Peace Education, she strives to provide individuals with the knowledge and skills they need to navigate conflicts for growth and greater impact.

One of the highlights of her work has been the opportunity to collaborate with the United Nations Information Centre and the American Negotiation Institute on her Bridges 2 Peace Bootcamp. Through this 2-day Facilitators led workshop, she has successfully equipped over 100 young people in Nigeria with essential peacebuilding skills. These empowered individuals actively engage in shaping peace within their local communities, creating a ripple effect that extends far beyond their immediate surroundings.

Advocacy lies at the heart of her peacebuilding approach. As the Founder of Peace Shapers, a nonprofit organization dedicated to shaping a safe and peaceful Africa, with and for children, she is deeply committed to raising awareness about the challenges students face. Her aim is to empower them as catalysts for peace, enabling them to make tangible impacts within their communities. From bullying and violence to inadequate infrastructure and lack of psychological support, she tirelessly advocates for policies and practices that prioritize the safety and well-being of learners.

To advance the cause of safe schools, she actively collaborates with educational stakeholders and policymakers. This collaboration involves championing policies that prioritize learner safety, engaging in community dialogues, launching impactful campaigns, and conducting workshops to empower educators, parents, and students themselves.She currently works as the Corporate Social Impact Officer at the American Negotiation Institute, where she is responsible for leading initiatives that generate meaningful social impact in Nigeria and soon, other regions.

OLABISI AFOLABI – Child Protection and Safeguarding Expert

Olabisi Afolabi is a Lawyer with close to a decade career experience in Social Development. She creates solutions in Safeguarding, Child Protection, and Education. 

She has worked in different capacities in the development and humanitarian sector as a safeguarding and protection consultant, advocate, programmes coordinator, facilitator/ trainer, and curriculum and policy developer. Her mission is to enlighten stakeholders, national and international organizations, and the public about the rights and protection of children. She currently works at Save the Children International, providing safeguarding support to all units, ensuring that their work in Nigeria respects the rights of affected people to protection.

In the course of her work, she had the opportunity to work with the non-profit organization S.A.F.E® for Children Society, where she served as a facilitator, policy and curriculum developer, and senior programs officer. She loved educating children on their rights to protection and even contributed to the publishing of the S.A.F.E®️Ville Family Comics. Being involved in mentoring the S.A.F.E®️Ville Children’s Parliament and coaching at the S.A.F.E®Ville Club was truly rewarding as it helped raise child advocates.

Another milestone for her was founding the EDUVIS initiative in 2018, a social enterprise dedicated to promoting effectiveness and dynamism in the education sector in Nigeria and beyond. Among other projects, EDUVIS hosted over 400 teachers in the first-ever Corps Teachers training in Nigeria, a free program aimed at equipping corps members who are deployed as teachers to be effective in their roles.

DR PHILLIP HAYAB JOHN – Child-Centered Pedagogy Expert

Dr Philip Hayab John is a teacher educator/language and pedagogy trainer, enabling best classroom practices in areas such as early grade reading, lesson plans, and learner-centered and activity-based approaches to teaching for concrete learning outcomes. In addition, Dr Hayab trains teachers on how to engage in self-study to support them develop English language proficiency to permit teachers to communicate better with learners. 

Accordingly, from February 2017 to date, Dr Hayab has offered education support services in programmes aimed at the Teacher Development Programme (TDP) supported by the British Council Nigeria. Other projects include LEARN to Read (USAID), UNICEF, Universal Basic Education Commission, early grade reading powered by EdoBEST, and Transforming Education Systems at the State Level – all World Bank-funded projects. 

As part of the identification of the low level of language proficiency of most teachers, Dr Hayab has led the training of over 20, 000 teachers across the federation aimed at Strengthening Teachers’ English Proficiency (STEP), including how to plan lessons with learners’ activities, ask the right questions in the classroom, and stimulate innovative pedagogical practices in schools for learners to learn better. 

Dr Hayab has equally supported about 2000 lecturers in colleges of education to gain the skills of exploring the enormous learning resources accessible through e-learning and other credible websites as a means of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for teachers designed to boost the quality of teaching in basic schools by integrating varied instructional resources to make learning more engaging and less abstract. 

Given the proof of low literacy among a record of Africa’s schoolchildren, Dr Hayab is involved with the African storybook initiative (https://africanstorybook.org) supporting early literacy development both in Hausa and other Nigerian languages by evolving the use of a digital library of stories in African languages for pupils as well as adult readers. Through the scheme, Dr Hayab translates, creates, and adapts stories into Hausa, and Hyam language, his mother tongue, and other languages with the sole aim of nurturing a reading culture in young learners from the cradle.

The scope of Hayab’s education covers Literary Studies, African Studies, African Languages, General Linguistics, and teacher education incorporating language, culture, identity, literacy, and the world. As a result, his work and research focus on adapting and incorporating a multilingual approach to education for equal opportunities, supporting inclusivity, gender equality, better-quality (pre/in-service) teacher education, and enhanced management of schools and skills acquisition based on the thinking that quality education adds value to human development.

BLESSING ALIYU TARFA – Classroom Management and Positive Discipline Expert

Blessing Tarfa ‘Mam’ is a trained educationist with years of programmatic and research experience on the impact of conflict on educational systems. She is a member of the Abuja Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum and a Kashim Ibrahim Fellow of the Kaduna State Government.

A Safe Schools expert, Blessing develops tools to support policy implementation towards education resiliency including the Safe Schools Minimum Standards for Basic and Secondary Schools in Nigeria. She is also the Creative Director at Play.Ed Limited, a company created to address the punitive ways education is presented to children in Nigeria.

Blessing is an international award-winning writer with works published in online and print magazines. She enjoys reading, writing, teaching and learning.