"My mother had nothing. But she made sure I had everything I needed to become someone. ÌYÁ is how I do that for the girls she cannot reach."
— Adedamola Adebayo, FounderOur founder, Adedamola Adebayo, grew up in a low-income household. Her father was absent. Her mother had no money, no connections, and no safety net, but she had presence, consistency, and the absolute refusal to let her children believe they were limited by where they started.
She took loans she could not afford to keep them in school. She showed up through the bullying, through the hard years, through everything she was never supposed to survive.
That was her dream. She dreamed it when she had nothing to dream it with.
Adedamola has spent her adult life trying to understand what her mother gave her and how to give it to girls who are growing up the way she did, in communities where potential is everywhere and the conditions for it are not. Girls who are capable of everything. Girls who need one person to notice that before they stop believing it themselves.
