Adepeju Opeyemi Jaiyeoba
Tribute
Adepeju Opeyemi Jaiyeoba creates safe birthing kits for Nigerian mothers through the Brown Button Foundation while raising her own two children with the certainty that every life deserves a protected beginning and supported journey. We celebrate the maternal mortality battles fought professionally and the childhood fevers monitored personally, the healthcare innovations developed for communities and the healing touches offered within family embraces. We honour Adepeju, the social entrepreneur who applies her compassionate vision at every scale.
Profile
Adepeju Opeyemi Jaiyeoba is a distinguished social entrepreneur, lawyer, and activist dedicated to improving maternal and child health in Nigeria. She is the founder of the Brown Button Foundation, a non-governmental organization committed to reducing maternal mortality by providing essential training to birth attendants and distributing sterile delivery kits to health centers across the country. This initiative was inspired by the tragic loss of a close friend during childbirth in 2011, highlighting the urgent need for safer birthing practices in Nigeria. To date, her efforts have facilitated the distribution of hundreds of thousands of delivery kits, significantly enhancing the safety of childbirth for numerous Nigerian women. In addition to her work with the Brown Button Foundation, she founded Mother’s Delivery Kit, a social enterprise that supplies affordable and sterile birthing kits to health facilities and expectant mothers. Recognizing the importance of nutrition in early childhood development, she also established Colorful Giggles, a Lagos-based company producing affordable and nutritious infant food sourced from local ingredients. Her innovative approaches have garnered international recognition, including being honored by former U.S. President Barack Obama during the 2014 Young African Leaders Presidential Summit in Washington, D.C. She has also received the HRH Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize in 2018 and has been acknowledged as one of JCI’s Top 10 Outstanding Young Persons of the World in 2017. Adepeju Jaiyeoba is also a mother of two children.