For our Woman Crush Wednesday, we have Oluwafunke Adeoye, who is a lawyer and human rights defender. She has garnered 8 years’ experience working on human rights, social innovation, and criminal justice issues. Her near-death experience which resulted in child loss prompted her decision to live purposefully. She founded Hope Behind Bars Africa, where she leads the capital defense team. The organisation provides access to justice to indigent pre-trial inmates, builds the capacity of stakeholders in the criminal justice system, and advocates for reforms.
That is not all there is to this amazon. ‘Funke oversees Made in Corrections, a social enterprise aimed at preventing recidivism by empowering incarcerated women and young persons. In 2020, with support from the German government, she supervised a project that saw female inmates producing reusable facemasks that were distributed for free to prison inmates and across 11 low-income communities in Nigeria’s capital city Abuja as part of the measures to prevent the coronavirus.
In continued pursuit of a purposeful life, since 2019, ‘Funke has served as a contributory expert for the World Justice Project Rule of law Index. She is a member of the Working Group Project: Private Sector Implementation of the National Ethics and Integrity Policy 2020.
‘Funke has a law degree from the University of Benin. She won Accountability Lab’s SDG 16 Innovation Challenge in 2018, and from there graduated into its 2019 incubator programme. She is a 2019 Makwanyane Fellow of Cornell Centre on the Death Penalty Worldwide; 2020 LEAP Africa Social Innovation fellow; 2021 Mandela Washington Fellow; and has been selected as a 2021 One Young World delegate through the European Commission Peace Ambassador programme. She was recognized by the Future Awards Africa in 2019 as a finalist for the prize for advocacy. And in 2020, she got listed by The Attic as one of the lawyers changing the world for the better.
When she’s not defending the helpless through the law, ‘Funke enjoys spending time with her husband, son, and adopted daughters in Abuja. We admire ‘Funke for her good deeds. She is a replica of the ideal woman, who is purpose-driven and is winning both in career and family. This is why we made her our Woman Crush Wednesday.