By Juliet Ebirim

• …What police, judicial system lack
• …Only four convictions out of 5,000 cases in Lagos
• …Recounts personal experience
• …Says “We need to break the culture of silence”

Following the rising cases of rape and sexual abuse in the country, one woman has taken it upon herself to sensitize young ones against this menace. Funke Oguntuga – a girl-child activist, emotional intelligence expert and relationship blogger is the CEO of Heartminders Project, an organisation which specialises on sex education and relationship.

In this chat with  Juliet Ebirim, the mother of three who has continued to be an inspiration to many shares her rape ordeal as a teenager, as well as her experience working with young people and other rape victims. Excerpt;

What led to the birth of the Heartminders Project?

After school, I worked in a media house as a journalist and then proceeded to the banking industry for about nine years. After that, I went into blogging on relationship, sex and marriage. Most of the feedbacks I got were mostly from youths and teenagers on sex and sexuality. I decided to take an online diploma course on dating and relationship.

There was a particular time I visited a secondary school because I realised there was a vacuum in the educational sector on the type of sex education that should be taught to teenagers, so I started Heartminders Initiative. I started going to schools to teach sex education for free. From there we started getting a lot of projects and we found ourselves campaigning against rape and sexual abuse. This was in 2011.

How has the journey been so far?

It’s been awesome. It’s as if this is what I was born to do. Growing up volunteering and being a member of Junior Chambers International (JCI) back at the University of Ibadan has prepared me for service. What we do basically at Heartminders is to sensitize people ab