About
Us
Adebola Adefioye is an award winning educator, mental health advocate and social impact leader. She is an Early Childhood Education (ECE) Professor and the Team Lead at Adebola Adefioye Consulting.
Adebola holds a diploma in Early Childhood Education, Bachelors of Child Development, Graduate Certificate in Mental Health Intervention (MHI), Master’s in Child and Youth Care (CYC) and currently a PhD Policy Studies student at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Adebola Adefioye founded the Afro Women And Youth Foundation after her daughter’s experience of racism in Grade 2. Her daughter was bullied for her skin color and Adebola and her husband supported her to build confidence and self-advocacy skills.
After 3 years of demonstrating self-advocacy skills and resistance, she won the “Most Confident Child” award and in Grade 5. In Grade 8, she won the Principal’s Award for demonstrating outstanding leadership, respect towards others and being inclusive of everyone’s uniqueness and individualism. She has continued to thrive academically, won a SHAD scholarship, and is contributing to youth and social justice work.
Adebola decided to extend more support to other immigrant Black youth and women who may be experiencing racism so she registered the AWYF as a non-profit organization in 2019 while studying at Seneca Polytechnic.
Over the years with support from various collaborators, partners, and community friends, the Afro Women and Youth Foundation’s program and services has reached over three thousand Black immigrant women, youth and families in Toronto and Sudbury, Ontario.
We continue to utilize feedback from program participants, research findings, strategic partnerships, internal and external evaluations and collaborations to advance our work in an empowering, and culturally responsive manner.
Our Approach
We work from a Strengths-Based, Culturally Responsive and Trauma-Informed approach. We factor Intersectionality into work and we value research based data, lived and living experiences, strategic partnerships and collaborations with funding partners.
