Ifeyinwa Madu Egwaoje

For 17 years Ifeyinwa Madu Egwaoje has devoted her life and time to improving the quality of life that Nigerian women live through provision of sexual and reproductive health and gender development training and also increasing access to quality health care for pregnant women in rural areas in Nigeria. In 1997 Ifeyinwa became an adolescent reproductive health and gender development trainer having gone through a three year training in Girls Power Initiative. She became a facilitator in the organization, and equipped young women with knowledge and skills that enabled them change behavior, question gender roles and become visible and empowered members of their communities. She worked with peer educators on HIV/AIDS prevention as part of a USAID funded project with the NELA consortium AIDS Initiative in Nigeria (NECAIN). Anchored the Learning About Living project in Edo State, where she partnered with the Ministry of Education on the implementation of Family Life HIV/AIDS education curriculum and trained teachers from secondary schools on the use of computers to teach reproductive health and gender education to Nigerian adolescents.

As part of her National Youth service Ifeyinwa worked with Society for Family Health as a research assistant and provided evidence to monitor and evaluate interventions in maternal health, Malaria and HIV/AIDS programs. In 2010 she was selected by Ashoka and Maternal Health Task Force alongside fourteen other young Change makers from around the world as one of the prestigious young champions to take part in the first ever international fellowship on maternal health. She was paired with Kathryn Hall Trujillo an Ashoka fellow in the Birthing Project, United States of America. Where she learnt how to use a volunteer effort to provide practical support to pregnant women during pregnancy until the baby is one year old.

Currently Ifeyinwa is implementing a maternal health project in Evboroko community in Edo State Nigeria. The project increases access to maternal and neonatal health care through provision of prenatal home based care, teach birth preparedness, link women to health facilities and respond to emergency obstetric complication and also provide free clean birth kit for every pregnant woman in that community. She is also a research and Evaluation consultant with the Society For Family Health and have taken part in the following: MAP survey, this study uses Geographical Information System (GIS) and Lot Quality. Supervised the state team that conducted the baseline survey of the State Specific HIV/AIDS, Reproductive Health and Child Health survey, of ESMPIN project. Supervised the South East team on ACTWATCH survey, and also assessed data reported by sub recipients to Society for family Health on the Global fund malaria project.