Blessing Oladunjoye

Blessing Oladunjoye is a Civil Society expert and disability rights advocate with over 5 years of experience. Blessing is the founder and team lead of BONews Service, an online platform that gives voice to marginalized Civil Society groups and disabled people’s organizations.

Blessing has served as the Nigeria Community Manager (NCM) for Emani, an international research organization based in the UK. As the NCM, Blessing leads Emani’s activities in Nigeria and works closely with CSO groups, State Coordinators and Local Government Volunteers across the 36 states and 774 LGAs respectively.

Blessing served as a member of the National Technical Working Group (TWG) on the National Social Protection Policy and she is a member of the National Social Protection Forum, a network of CSO groups working on Social Protection across Nigeria.

Blessing has served as a Technical Advisor on ‘Media and Mainstream CSO Engagement’ with the Lagos State Chapter of the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities (JONAPWD), the umbrella body for all Disabled People’s Organizations (DPOs) in Nigeria. She also serves as a consultant to the National Secretariat of JONAPWD.

Blessing is a media partner with DFID (now FCDO)-PERL in South West Nigeria where she has worked closely with various Citizens’ groups across South West Nigeria on Open Government Partnership and Inclusive and Participatory Budget Engagement. Blessing is a member of Lagos State Civil Society Participation for Development, LACSOP, an umbrella body for all CSO groups in Lagos State, set up DFID-SAVI.

Blessing is a member of Code for Africa, the continent’s largest network of civic technology which builds digital democracy solutions that give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions, and which strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.

Blessing’s work has contributed immensely to the development and implementation of frameworks on gender and social-inclusion in sectors like education, health and social protection.

• 2024, Recruited field team and conducted weekly check-in meetings with field team to ensure evaluation project in Western Balkans is well implemented.
• 2024, Identified and recruited researchers to complete surveys on citizens' sentiments ahead of the Venezuela elections in July 2024.
• 2023, Led the employability training and skills acquisition for potential irregular migrants in Nigeria.
• 2023, Led the recruitment, training, and supervised field team in Benue, Nasarawa, Kogi and Plateau states in Nigeria to conduct the ex-post Evaluation on P/CVE Projects funded by GCERF.
• 2023, Research assistant on the Gender-Based Violence Experiences of Women with Disabilities in Nigeria.
• 2022, Hired and managed the Nigerian field team on cross border economic assessment and migration for XCEPT.
• 2021-2023, Set up various teams for diverse research and evaluation projects on security trends, politics, election and economy for Emani.
• 2017-till date, Led the CSO engagement with the Lagos State Government, specifically the Ministries of Health, Economic, Planning and Budget, Education and Women Affairs for Lagos State Civil Society Partnership (LACSOP).
• 2022, Technical support to the Lagos State Ministry of Economic, Planning and Budget which led to the adoption of the Lagos State Social Protection Policy.