"Colonizing Compassion"
Olu Todunke – TEDx Speaker | Certified Family Life Practitioner | Advocate for Compassionate Change
Todunke is a certified Family Life Practitioner, healthcare administrator, educator, and advocate with a powerful voice for holistic family wellbeing and generational healing. With a rich background working across healthcare and human development, she brings over a decade of experience helping families navigate conflict, build emotional resilience, and restore meaningful connections.
Her work is rooted in deep compassion, especially for children, at-risk youth, and individuals with intellectual and developmental challenges. Todunke’s approach blends evidence-based practices with culturally grounded wisdom, offering practical support to parents, caregivers, and entire communities.
Tonight she is going to boldly challenge the dominant narratives surrounding African children and families. She asserts that true compassion begins not with charity, but with humility—with the willingness to listen, to relinquish control of the story, and to allow those who live the experience to lead the conversation. “The story of the African child,” she says, “has been told too often by those who don’t live it.”
Her core belief is simple yet profound: when individuals heal, families heal; when families heal, communities are strengthened—and the world becomes a more compassionate place.
