Oluwaseun Ayodeji Osowobi, Winner of the 2020 Global Citizen Prize: Nigeria’s Hero Award
The Executive Director of Stand to End Rape Initiative (STER), a youth-led social enterprise advocating against sexual violence, providing prevention mechanisms and supporting survivors with psychological services, Oluwaseun Ayodeji Osowobi has been named winner of the 2020 Global Citizen Prize: Nigeria’s Hero Award.
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Interning with the United Nations Headquarters in New York and Half the Sky Movement facilitated her advocacy work. While interning, she wrote several articles on women, children, and social justice. She further worked as a Project Manager for Enough is Enough Nigeria (EiE), an advocacy organization working to enhance citizen engagement and good governance.
Her interest in advocacy led to the launch of the STER Initiative in 2014, to advocate against gender-based violence (GBV), teach prevention in communities, and support survivors with legal, social and psychological services. STER Initiative has provided psychological support to over 550 survivors and has worked with communities to generate sustainable homegrown solutions. STER joined feminist organizations to advocate for Gender and Equal Opportunities (GEO) Bill, which makes provisions for women’s access to political spaces, using 35% quota systems for women, women’s access to family planning and agricultural produce, and loans.
The organization has won several awards like the Best Use of Social Media by an NGO in Africa at the 2015 Social Media Awards Africa.
Oluwaseun is dedicated to enabling systemic change by teaching consent education, providing capacity building support on sexual violence prevention and intervention to governmental institutions as well as supporting policy advocacy to enjoin the Nigerian government for the passage of gender-centered laws.
In 2019, Oluwaseun worked alongside civil society organizations and the British Council in Nigeria on the EU-funded Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption (RoLAC) project to facilitate the establishment of Nigeria’s first national sex offenders register, a repository for sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) data and information on offenders. She further collaborated with the BBC on the Sex for Grades documentary to investigate sexual harassment in Nigerian tertiary institutions.
She was recently named one of Time’s 100 Next list and further partnered with the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust to launch a Mental Health Toolkit, a resource to help survivors deal with trauma, as well as providing a stable atmosphere where they could heal.
The Country Hero Award which will be presented during the Global Citizen Prize award ceremony on the 21st of December 2020 (9pm WAT) honors individuals around the world who have shown exceptional commitment to the United Nations Global Goals in their country and globally, and championing the most vulnerable people.