John Oluwadero
Founder, Building Nations Initiative (BNI)

John Oluwadero has eight year’s experience working with children, young people and their families.  He leads Building Nations Initiative (BNI), a youth work and community development organization in Nigeria. As the founder of BNI, he harnessed his leadership, community organising and resource mobilization skills to establish a community youth centre at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The centre provides for children and young people to equitably access healthy relationships, skills building, lifelong learning, and youth friendly services that would positively empower them for life. BNI also operates outreach youth centres in three cities in South West Nigeria. Through various centre-based programs and out-of centre projects operated by BNI, John has led a team of young volunteers to directly impact over 24600 children, young people and their families in six communities.

As the Africa Regional Representative for the Commonwealth Youth Sport for Development and Peace Network CYSDP of the Commonwealth Youth Programme, he led a nationwide

#Sport4DevelopmentNG campaign to advocate the harnessing of sports for peace and youth inclusion in sports governance, through the instrument of the Nigeria Sports Bill. The campaign contributed to the reinstatement of the National Sports Festival by the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports after its suspension for six years. He is currently the Literacy Lead (Africa) for the Royal Commonwealth Society, a role that affords him the opportunity to promote literacy among school children in Africa.

In response to the need of vulnerable young people and their families amidst COVID-19 crisis, John led BNI partnership with other six youth organisations to implement the Food Aid for COVID-19 Emergency FACE project. Through FACE, 1317 people representing 150 households were reached with food aids, hand sanitizers, and nose masks.

John has worked with the Ekiti and Oyo State governments on public health projects funded by USAID, Global Fund, PMI, and PEPFAR for HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Family planning, and Tuberculosis programs. In these roles, he provided technical assistance on the procurement, and supply chain management of health commodities.

He is a 2018 recipient of the Junior Chamber International (JCI) Ten Outstanding Young Person in Nigeria (TOYP) National Award and a Fellow of the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town. He has also received an award by the United Nations Development Programme UNDP in recognition of his contribution to Youth Leadership and Governance.

He is committed to advancing positive youth development outcomes through youth systems strengthening, multi-sectoral collaboration, research, and best practices.