EdTech Adventures: Multifaceted Representation with Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi
[00:00:00] Charlotte Cheng: Welcome to EdTech Adventures. Join us as we explore the role of technology, STEM, and creative play in education. With expert guests, we'll discover how learning is always an adventure.
What if you didn't see yourself in the stories you read? What if you heard them in your native language accompanied by the music you grew up with as a child? This is what multifaceted representation can look like when you implement inclusive strategies in every aspect of the learning experience that you create. Today our guest Louisa Olafuyi will share how she practices multifaceted representation in their reading platform for kids. Louisa and her husband, Oladele, are founders of Kunda Kids, an award-winning Black-owned children's publishing, EdTech, and media company whose mission is to expose children to diverse and inclusive stories that make them feel represented and teach them about other people and places.
Thanks so much for joining us, Louisa.
[00:01:00] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Thank you, Charlotte. It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:02] Charlotte Cheng: Yeah. Happy to have you. And so excited to dive into this topic. Now, now let's start at the beginning of your journey. Could you describe a memorable education experience that you've had as a student?
[00:01:15] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Maybe not the most memorable, but definitely a memory that really, I haven't been able to forget and was the first introduction to the fact that no one really knows about where I come from or people like me come from, um, was in my history class in high school. So I'm Ugandan born, but I've been raised in the UK for most of my life and then went through primary, secondary, and tertiary education in the UK.
And I remember in secondary school, my teacher, a history teacher, introduced the fact that we were learning about Black History I'm like, okay, I'm Black, like one of the only few Black people in the school here for it. Let's go. But unfortunately that whole, I think it was two days. Yeah. Two sessions was just focused on Black History, beginning and ending with slavery.
And I was so confused because having been born in Uganda, go to Uganda quite often to meet my family, learn about my heritage. My grandpa's always all about our family tree. I'm like, I don't remember seeing slaves in the story. So what's happening here? Like what's going on. And it was just really such a poor education that gave a glimpse of part of Black History. Right? But what went really wrong in that class for me as a 12-year-old Black girl in the UK was not understanding that it is a part of history, but it is not history itself. And it really shaped my understanding of the lack of knowledge about Black History, Black people, African, Black British, African American, and all the diversity that we are and that we exist in the world.
The fact that it was just reduced to, uh, one incident, which was a significant and unfortunate incident, but not the entirety of our history. So that's one memory that really sticks out to me. And I think one thing that makes me feel, I guess a little bit sad is the fact that I speak to a lot of young people, and their history classes are still pretty much the same, same narrative. So that's a memory that sticks out to me. That was definitely, uh, something that spearheaded what I'm doing at the moment.
[00:03:48] Charlotte Cheng: Right. I hear you. And it can be frustrating. I mean, I'm Asian American and to just lump all of us together, all Asian Americans into a single month of study.
I mean, how, how can you even like even reach the surface of that for every single country that's included in that and for the long history? So, it sounds like that memory, it stuck with you, both you and I have the same age kid, four, so for your son, is that part of what made you become interested in children's publishing?
[00:04:18] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Yeah, absolutely. So when I had my son, I was working in publishing. I was working at the Cambridge University Press. I was living in Cambridge because my husband and Co-Founder of Kunda Kids as well at the time was just concluding his MBA. And I remember thinking how beautiful of a city Cambridge is with the cycling and the canals and, you know, everything that you see on Google Images for Cambridge is pretty much it.
It's just a beautiful quintessential city. But at the same time, again, we were always the only Black people anywhere doing anything. And because it's such a transient community of students, they expect that if you're not white, you're a student, you're just here for a short time, you're coming in and you're leaving, but we were actually living there.
And I remember thinking to myself that I really just don't want my son to be...I completely accept that he will have to get used to being a Black person in, in white spaces and a minority. Right? But what would bother me is if he doesn't have a very developed and confident sense of self in terms of his identity, who he is, where he comes from.
That was my thing. And I thought the UK can be the kind of place that if you're not careful and you don't have the opportunity is to really express yourself, right? Uh, it can be the kind of place that can make you forget about yourself. So I thought, well, granted my son was probably only nine months at the time.
We were like, how can we get him to learn about his culture, love where he's at, but completely understand and have an appreciation of how he got to this place. Right? And because my husband is Nigerian and I'm Ugandan, we're African mixed heritage. And sometimes people don't forget that we're mixed heritage because we're just Black.
So it was great to be able to think about that and how we wanted to start building his persona about a positive Black heritage that he has. And we realized that stories are the window to children's world, it's how they learn about things and places and people that they don't see in their real life, in their everyday life.
So we started with stories and yeah, the rest is history.
[00:06:40] Charlotte Cheng: I write children's books myself and that's part of what drove me was this heritage piece that my kid also, she knows more Spanish than Mandarin. And my family's from an island called Taiwan and people like, don't even understand the difference that Taiwan can be different from other parts of Asia and how that impacts her heritage.
So I'm so glad that you're building this library for your son to learn more about his heritage. Now I think Kunda Kids is more than just books though. So what do you think makes Kunda Kids unique from other publishing and EdTech companies out there?
[00:07:15] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Oh, great question. So Kunda Kids is so much more than books, but books is how we started.
Um, books and education is very much at the heartland of everything that we're doing, but since publishing books and becoming a publisher ourselves, we now have an app and we also are developing animations. We just launched Kunda & Friends, which is an animated series with more animations in the pipeline.
So yes, we are more than books, but what was really important to us was establishing the importance of storytelling. And how important storytelling is in terms of how we pass down stories about our culture, about ourselves and storytelling is something that is, it's all, it sometimes almost feels like a prerequisite to being African, whether you like it or not, your grandparents, your aunties, your uncles will tell you even unsolicited uninvited stories about you, your family, your culture.
It just is how we are. And I love the power of storytelling. And I remember when I was volunteering at TEDx, at TEDx Houston, and when Chimamanda did her speech about the challenges of a single story, and how important it is for us to be able to have nuance in our storytelling as adults. I really, really resonated with that.
But I was an adult hearing another adult talk about adult stories, but when I was growing up, I think the first book I really got captivated was like Heidi. And I think that I was probably about 16 before I really got into like a novel or a story with a strong Black protagonist. So the stories are just an element of what we do, but they will always remain at the anchor of who we are at Kunda Kids.
It's about trying to create an opportunity for us to tell our stories and also an opportunity for other Africans and creatives of Black descent to Black and African Caribbean descent to be able to tell their stories to you.
[00:09:19] Charlotte Cheng: Right. It just seems like storytelling is that thread through your entire company, but you're exploring it in so many different ways.
We mentioned representation. Clearly, Kunda Kids really supports representation for kids who are Black. It's multifaceted too. What does that mean to you when we say multifaceted representation? What's that meaning for you when you're working on your projects at Kunda Kids?
[00:09:41] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Yeah, great question. So multifaceted.
Really means for me personally and how I see how, like how we serve our audiences is the fact that most of our customers and audiences are just like me, kids running around all over the place, crazy busy job, lots of laundry to do, bills that need to be paid, uh, calls that need to be called back. So I really understood that we are targeting people who are really time poor, but who was so well intended and invested into the future and the well being of the young people that they safeguard. Right? So I was like, how do we do everything that we want to do where it doesn't, it's not taking anybody to have to spend any extra time or spend so much money or go out of their way to experience this.
How do we meet you where you are at? And that's why like we started at books and the books was great, but we realized that, uh, people wanted to be able to experience stories on the go and at home and at school. Which is why we developed the Kunda Kids app. So on the Kunda Kids app you can read lots of stories and it's also something that's being rolled out into schools in the UK in the US and Canada, Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda and Kenya actually.
So we were like okay we need to do the whole story thing. But we also need to think about the format about making it easy, accessible, which is why we did the app. And then the other thing was screen time. So you know, Charlotte, we were talking about this, the fact that our children are four. So screen time is this thing that is both a positive and a negative influence in our lives as parents, it is the bane of our existence, but then sometimes the savior of everything to when you need to get something done. And I spent a lot of time sort of reading articles, white papers, doing a bit of research on screen time, and my, the conclusion that I came to is 1) it's not just about screen time. It's about the quality of screen time, right? And how we are doing screen time. And what I mean by that is I definitely think as many opportunities as you can have to have more of a practical interaction and an outside playtime with your child is great. And definitely let's all aim to not have more screen time than outside practical play.
But in saying that, how we do screen time is important. So for instance, screen time is great. Maybe when you want to get some laundry done or you need to wash it up and you just want to distract your kids, that's one use of it, but you find that children actually take in a lot more information, super more enthusiastic about things and receptive to what they're learning when they're watching it with you, when they're watching your responses when they're engaging with you as a collaborative occasion, right? And also having screen time that is less about like distraction and more about engagement. So I love programs that break the third wall. So they actually interact and speak directly to the kids. They give them opportunities and pauses to answer.
So I really wanted us to approach what's happening on TV, what's happening on YouTube with a different point of view. Specifically with more diverse characters as well, supplementing that, I think that's one thing that really struck out to me was how can we do things interestingly? How can we do story time and screen time in a, in a really good way?
And that's what we've done with Kunda Kids and Kunda & Friends, which is our YouTube show. It's a music led show, which is Afro beats and an African take on nursery rhymes that we love, and some new nursery rhymes too. And this is because, Charlotte, when you're in the car, I'm sure you get to a point where you're like, I cannot listen to any more, uh, nursery rhymes.
And we wanted to create music. We wanted to create programs that not only children were having a good time too, but adults were vibing with as well. And it wasn't torture for mom and dad to have to sit and watch it. So we found that engaging parents and getting them interested and invested and loving the content to create some much better environment for screen time and a much better, um, I guess, uh, occasion for everybody, really.
[00:14:17] Charlotte Cheng: I like that cause then you have a different type of learning experience for any occasion. You can be more involved or less involved, or you're in the car. There's opportunities for engagement and representation across all of those channels. And then you mentioned that you're from Uganda, your husband's from Nigeria.
We've talked about Black History Month that only tackled slavery. So how did you expand representation, you know, with all over 130 countries with that music, what are the strategies that you use to expand that representation in the products and projects that you create?
[00:14:50] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: I don't know if this is a strategy as much as it just feels to me to be common sense that we've wrapped up in a strategy, but essentially it's the fact, the fundamental single fact that learning about Africa is not just something for African people, right?
It is, or people of African descent, the same way that gender equality is not just a woman's issue. Right? Addressing systematic racism is not just something that minorities can do by themselves. Right? So that same approach we take to the kind of work that we do at Kunda Kids, where everybody can and should benefit from being able to learn something, one thing, lots of things about Africa, right? Because it is an entire continent, which I think by 2040, a quarter percent of the world population will be of African descent. So, you know, as Africans and as Black people, we're not going anywhere. So it's great to be able to have more of an inclusive narrative.
Right? When we got to start doing Kunda Kids, because I come from a sort of market research and insight background, I remember seeing that there was an upward trend in diverse books in the children's space. And what I mean by diverse books is going from like two to 4 percent of books with a Black lead character, which is progress.
It's not great progress, but it's progress. And I remember thinking to myself, "Hmm, I wonder who's writing these books, what is spurring this trend?" And what I saw was a lot of books being published, not all of course, but a sizable majority of books being published were not being published by minority authors.
It was the same authors, but just changing the color skin tone of the characters. But what you're missing there is cultural nuance and so much detail and the beauty is in the detail when it comes to storytelling. It's not just good enough to change the character to brown or olive skinned and think that that's going to do the job.
You know, absolutely not. So our main strategy back to your question is about making it important for people to understand that the same way. I love learning about French culture and I learned about the Eiffel Tower and I learned to say "Oui Oui" and all you know all these basic things that we know about French culture.
And German culture and Australia is the same way that we should be able to learn about Nigeria and Ghana and South Africa, and that we are doing the next generation a disservice by not giving them the opportunity to have a wholesome and enlightened educational experience, but everywhere in the world, we just want to focus on Africa because it's what we know that we know, but fundamentally thinking about race specifically. Minorities are not racist to themselves. So it is because there is a divide of information and experiences which causes ignorance. So I think one thing that's been quite unique to Kunda Kids is the fact that we've been able to get everybody involved in the conversation.
We want to make everybody interested in Africa. We want all the kids, you know, to be able to come and learn something new. And we want teachers not to feel like being part of this experience is making them feel like a racist or a racist by proxy. Right? And that being able to teach Black History should not be intimidating and something that actually causes anxiety because they're worried that they're going to get things wrong, or that they're going to end up on TMZ or the Shade Borough because they did something wrong.
No, we want to create an environment that we can ask all the questions. We can have all the support. And what we really want to do is just to provide an education and a great experience. So I think that's a single strategy. It's not making a Black thing about Black people only. It's about bringing everybody into the conversation and giving everybody a safe space.
[00:19:18] Charlotte Cheng: That's great. And yeah, I like the word safe space. We do that too in our video games. It's like this whole idea is when you feel safe, you're willing to explore and try new things, right? And so if you're putting them into a safe space to explore different countries in Africa, they're going to be more willing to explore because they feel safe.
And I think the same thing with an educator, if they feel like it's a safe environment for them to teach, they're going to be more willing to maybe teach outside of Black History Month, maybe every, every month, right?
[00:19:52] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Imagine that! Learning about Africa outside of the month.
[00:19:58] Charlotte Cheng: That would be amazing, right? If you like,
[00:20:00] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: ...you can dream, but no, absolutely.
And that, that is, you know, that's the whole point. That's what we want to be able to do, but we're just taking it in baby steps and just wanting parents and educators to know that they have a support system behind them to be able to ask questions, check on stuff, verify sources, have books, resources, posters, just knowing that they have an arsenal, because the fact that they even have the intention to do it is amazing.
So let's leverage that good intention and support it with good resources.
[00:20:37] Charlotte Cheng: Yeah. Reward them on the progress they've already made. I agree. Like that's how you build allies outside of just your minority group, right?
[00:20:45] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Exactly.
[00:20:46] Charlotte Cheng: Now, how could a platform like Kunda Kids grow into the future? Like where are your plans for the
future?
[00:20:52] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Oh my gosh. Oh, so, I mean, I spend a lot of time in an alternate universe where we're doing things that I don't even know that we have the technology to do. But for the most part, when this year began, I had a very, very, very clear vision about the fact that experiences was going to be the anchor for a lot of things that we're doing and how to really maximize experiences.
So I'll give you an example. You can buy Kunda Kids books on Amazon, on our website, bookstores, yada, yada, and people do, which is great and really happy about that. But usually when people buy online, they'll buy and we don't really hear from them again. But when we put a Kunda Kids event together, right? We're not an events company, but when we do a Kunda Kids event, when we do a meetup, when we do a pop up, when we do a takeover, it's almost always sold out.
People really don't really care about what books they're buying. They're just kind of just like, give me everything. And we get so much more feedback from people so like emails. It takes me a lot to email a company to say, "I really loved my experience with you." Like no news is good news as far as customers are concerned.
If they're not complaining, just, you know, for the most part, we'll assume that everything is okay. So when people take their time to email the company or to email me directly, it really means a lot to me because I assume, like I said, our majority target audience are time poor people. So the fact that they've been able to make that time to give me or us feedback is the ultimate compliment, honestly, personally.
So, saying all of that to say that one of the things that I really focused on this year was how do we create amazing experiences? How do we create those experiences in-person, locally, internationally, virtually, where somebody walks away from it and they feel like they need to let us know that they loved it.
Or even if they don't let us know, somebody else, your sister, your friend, the WhatsApp group chat, whatever. I think it's always lovely when that happens. And it's because that we've built something that's so much more than just our products. It's an experience. It's the coming together. We find that Kunda Kids parents, so the parents of the kids that are consuming Kunda Kids. They also really enjoy each other too. So we have like a like mindedness of parents that come together in our events, that they almost see our events as networking opportunities. Because one thing I realized, I'm sorry if I'm going on a tangent, Charlotte, but just one point that I really wanted to make was when I was pregnant.
I thought, "Oh, I need to make more mommy friends." And when I had my son, I did make mommy friends from nursery and stuff, but people assume that just because you've had a baby, that you have anything in common. And a lot of the time you don't. You know, and it's equally hard trying to find your tribe, especially your tribe going through your life stage with you at the moment, right?
Hard enough finding your tribe, now try and find your tribe that's also happy to breastfeed in public places or whatever it is. So, one thing I love about this kind of experience focus is that somehow it's gotten like minded people in the room. And it's almost as if, if you love Kunda Kids, there's an extent to which you're already buying into an ideology and a value system.
Right? A value system about embracing heritage, a value system about educating young people, a value system about parenting is hard but let's do what we can. So I think those combined values when people come together it just automatically seems to galvanize into a lovely experience. So for that reason, experiences has been one of my things and something that we're really working hard to see how to leverage, especially now that we're in a virtual reality web three AI phase where having experiences virtually is equally as important sometimes as having them in-person.
So this is one of the things that I'm very much looking at, and what I'm working towards achieving for us in the near future, and the future future.
[00:25:28] Charlotte Cheng: And it doesn't sound like just you're building experiences, you're building a community, right? Is that, that's just so empowering because then they can continue that progress in their own way, whether it's with their kids or in their work that they do.
Yeah, that's that's very inspiring. I'm excited I was like "Sign me up! Like how do I? I'm in California, so it's a little far, but like you said, yeah,
[00:25:53] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: I hope that we'll get to you soon. So I am planning on really having so much more of a footprint in the States. So we will do something. I'll, I'll find you Charlotte, somehow, somewhere else.
Make sure.
[00:26:06] Charlotte Cheng: Yes,
I will keep in touch. I might have some authors I want to introduce you to whenever that happens that are here and all about the work that you do too. Now, I love to close this off by giving some advice to people who are inspired by this conversation. So what advice would you give to someone who wants to increase multifaceted representation in the educational work that they do, whether that's in the classroom.
So how do I go beyond Black History Month or in the products that they're creating, whether it's a video game or some other platform where they're, they're trying to increase representation?
[00:26:41] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: I think there are a number of ways that you can probably go about that, but I think ultimately is to take it bit by bit, right?
So if you actually think about it and strip it back, it's quite a big task to think, "how do I improve representation in this thing that I'm doing?" It's quite gigantic in the scheme of things, and it's probably not something that will happen successfully by one or two single incidents or, you know, events or activations or initiatives, whatever.
It's probably something that you will achieve successfully over time by small intentional interventions that you do learn from, redo better learn from, get people involved and redo. So kind of a little bit like, uh, what do you call it?
[00:27:37] Charlotte Cheng: Iteration?
[00:27:38] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. Having a reiterative approach and not trying to slay a big dragon all in one time.
Right? So outline what your overall objective is. I think it's good to have an overall thing that you want to achieve and start by looking at what your easy wins are. What are your low hanging fruits? Where do you have influence? Where do you know that you have a class? If you're a teacher that you could do something interesting and that you have autonomy in, where do you have a voice that you can talk about stuff and just try one thing bit by bit first.
And then it will all come together and kind of grow on it. I think we put a lot of pressure on educators and even on, and even just, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as parents anyway, just as a function of being parents to try and do everything all at once, first time, win, no fail. And it's, I think it's, it's too much and unrealistic.
So my advice would be, think about what your overall objective is, highlight, maybe top five areas that you feel like you can have the most influence or the most impact and work on them systematically one by one work on one review one and see how to repeat it better next week or in your next session and then work on the next thing but just do it in bites when you try to tackle two especially, especially in this particular area of diversity and inclusion in children's content.
I've seen so many times, Charlotte, where actually it becomes less about the kids and more about building your own personal profile and feeding your ego as the D& I expert in this field that we've completely lost sight of just the, the everyday wins, right? And it becomes too much of a show, uh, and too performative.
So I would say, yeah, have an overall objective, but just focus on the small things first. Try out, for example, if you're a teacher and you buy a Kunda Kids book, we will give you, and we know when you're a teacher, if we don't know, sorry, if we do know, we will definitely do this. And if not, then we'll definitely reach out.
If we find out that you're a teacher, we give you a teacher's guide. So you might buy a book, let's say "A is for Africa", which is an ABC book on Africa. Then we will give you a teacher's guide. So that includes lots of classroom exercises, questions to ask your children, crossword puzzles, critical thinking exercises.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So just try small bits and see how that goes. Give feedback to one or two parents and see how that goes. And then grow from there and measure and document your impact. But I wouldn't worry too much about like trying to do too much all at once. It is it's a lot.
[00:30:32] Charlotte Cheng: Yes. I think it would be intimidating trying to tackle it all. And I love your idea of learning from each step as you go, because I felt the same way we've been doing DEI work at our company. And I had this plan. I had this great outline. And then whenever we started making progress, we had to shift. And it's okay to shift because you're not going to know until you explore, right?
[00:30:52] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So that's my advice on that.
[00:30:59] Charlotte Cheng: Well, thanks so much for joining us on this podcast, Louisa. I'm sure I've learned a lot from what you've done at Kunda Kids and all the best with you on your future work.
[00:31:07] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Thank you so much, Charlotte. It's a pleasure to have been on your podcast and always a blessing to be able to, to tell our story in any way, shape or form.
So thank you. And always lovely to speak to a mom going through the toddler phase. I always feel just a level of ease speaking to anybody in business and in storytelling, you know, with toddlers, because I, I know that we're all going through it. So it's always really refreshing and lovely to share ideas.
[00:31:36] Charlotte Cheng: Right. Exactly. It's a juggle and I agree just because you're a mom doesn't mean you're going to connect. But I feel like in many ways we can connect on many different levels as well.
[00:31:45] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: A hundred percent.
[00:31:47] Charlotte Cheng: All right. Thanks so much for joining.
[00:31:48] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Thanks Charlotte. Bye.
[00:31:53] Charlotte Cheng: Thanks for listening to EdTech Adventures. Please subscribe to catch more of our episodes and leave a review to support the show. For more resources and info, visit us at CodeCombat.com/podcast. I'm your host, Charlotte Cheng. We'll see you on our next learning adventure.
[00:00:00] Charlotte Cheng: Welcome to EdTech Adventures. Join us as we explore the role of technology, STEM, and creative play in education. With expert guests, we'll discover how learning is always an adventure.
What if you didn't see yourself in the stories you read? What if you heard them in your native language accompanied by the music you grew up with as a child? This is what multifaceted representation can look like when you implement inclusive strategies in every aspect of the learning experience that you create. Today our guest Louisa Olafuyi will share how she practices multifaceted representation in their reading platform for kids. Louisa and her husband, Oladele, are founders of Kunda Kids, an award-winning Black-owned children's publishing, EdTech, and media company whose mission is to expose children to diverse and inclusive stories that make them feel represented and teach them about other people and places.
Thanks so much for joining us, Louisa.
[00:01:00] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Thank you, Charlotte. It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:02] Charlotte Cheng: Yeah. Happy to have you. And so excited to dive into this topic. Now, now let's start at the beginning of your journey. Could you describe a memorable education experience that you've had as a student?
[00:01:15] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Maybe not the most memorable, but definitely a memory that really, I haven't been able to forget and was the first introduction to the fact that no one really knows about where I come from or people like me come from, um, was in my history class in high school. So I'm Ugandan born, but I've been raised in the UK for most of my life and then went through primary, secondary, and tertiary education in the UK.
And I remember in secondary school, my teacher, a history teacher, introduced the fact that we were learning about Black History I'm like, okay, I'm Black, like one of the only few Black people in the school here for it. Let's go. But unfortunately that whole, I think it was two days. Yeah. Two sessions was just focused on Black History, beginning and ending with slavery.
And I was so confused because having been born in Uganda, go to Uganda quite often to meet my family, learn about my heritage. My grandpa's always all about our family tree. I'm like, I don't remember seeing slaves in the story. So what's happening here? Like what's going on. And it was just really such a poor education that gave a glimpse of part of Black History. Right? But what went really wrong in that class for me as a 12-year-old Black girl in the UK was not understanding that it is a part of history, but it is not history itself. And it really shaped my understanding of the lack of knowledge about Black History, Black people, African, Black British, African American, and all the diversity that we are and that we exist in the world.
The fact that it was just reduced to, uh, one incident, which was a significant and unfortunate incident, but not the entirety of our history. So that's one memory that really sticks out to me. And I think one thing that makes me feel, I guess a little bit sad is the fact that I speak to a lot of young people, and their history classes are still pretty much the same, same narrative. So that's a memory that sticks out to me. That was definitely, uh, something that spearheaded what I'm doing at the moment.
[00:03:48] Charlotte Cheng: Right. I hear you. And it can be frustrating. I mean, I'm Asian American and to just lump all of us together, all Asian Americans into a single month of study.
I mean, how, how can you even like even reach the surface of that for every single country that's included in that and for the long history? So, it sounds like that memory, it stuck with you, both you and I have the same age kid, four, so for your son, is that part of what made you become interested in children's publishing?
[00:04:18] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Yeah, absolutely. So when I had my son, I was working in publishing. I was working at the Cambridge University Press. I was living in Cambridge because my husband and Co-Founder of Kunda Kids as well at the time was just concluding his MBA. And I remember thinking how beautiful of a city Cambridge is with the cycling and the canals and, you know, everything that you see on Google Images for Cambridge is pretty much it.
It's just a beautiful quintessential city. But at the same time, again, we were always the only Black people anywhere doing anything. And because it's such a transient community of students, they expect that if you're not white, you're a student, you're just here for a short time, you're coming in and you're leaving, but we were actually living there.
And I remember thinking to myself that I really just don't want my son to be...I completely accept that he will have to get used to being a Black person in, in white spaces and a minority. Right? But what would bother me is if he doesn't have a very developed and confident sense of self in terms of his identity, who he is, where he comes from.
That was my thing. And I thought the UK can be the kind of place that if you're not careful and you don't have the opportunity is to really express yourself, right? Uh, it can be the kind of place that can make you forget about yourself. So I thought, well, granted my son was probably only nine months at the time.
We were like, how can we get him to learn about his culture, love where he's at, but completely understand and have an appreciation of how he got to this place. Right? And because my husband is Nigerian and I'm Ugandan, we're African mixed heritage. And sometimes people don't forget that we're mixed heritage because we're just Black.
So it was great to be able to think about that and how we wanted to start building his persona about a positive Black heritage that he has. And we realized that stories are the window to children's world, it's how they learn about things and places and people that they don't see in their real life, in their everyday life.
So we started with stories and yeah, the rest is history.
[00:06:40] Charlotte Cheng: I write children's books myself and that's part of what drove me was this heritage piece that my kid also, she knows more Spanish than Mandarin. And my family's from an island called Taiwan and people like, don't even understand the difference that Taiwan can be different from other parts of Asia and how that impacts her heritage.
So I'm so glad that you're building this library for your son to learn more about his heritage. Now I think Kunda Kids is more than just books though. So what do you think makes Kunda Kids unique from other publishing and EdTech companies out there?
[00:07:15] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Oh, great question. So Kunda Kids is so much more than books, but books is how we started.
Um, books and education is very much at the heartland of everything that we're doing, but since publishing books and becoming a publisher ourselves, we now have an app and we also are developing animations. We just launched Kunda & Friends, which is an animated series with more animations in the pipeline.
So yes, we are more than books, but what was really important to us was establishing the importance of storytelling. And how important storytelling is in terms of how we pass down stories about our culture, about ourselves and storytelling is something that is, it's all, it sometimes almost feels like a prerequisite to being African, whether you like it or not, your grandparents, your aunties, your uncles will tell you even unsolicited uninvited stories about you, your family, your culture.
It just is how we are. And I love the power of storytelling. And I remember when I was volunteering at TEDx, at TEDx Houston, and when Chimamanda did her speech about the challenges of a single story, and how important it is for us to be able to have nuance in our storytelling as adults. I really, really resonated with that.
But I was an adult hearing another adult talk about adult stories, but when I was growing up, I think the first book I really got captivated was like Heidi. And I think that I was probably about 16 before I really got into like a novel or a story with a strong Black protagonist. So the stories are just an element of what we do, but they will always remain at the anchor of who we are at Kunda Kids.
It's about trying to create an opportunity for us to tell our stories and also an opportunity for other Africans and creatives of Black descent to Black and African Caribbean descent to be able to tell their stories to you.
[00:09:19] Charlotte Cheng: Right. It just seems like storytelling is that thread through your entire company, but you're exploring it in so many different ways.
We mentioned representation. Clearly, Kunda Kids really supports representation for kids who are Black. It's multifaceted too. What does that mean to you when we say multifaceted representation? What's that meaning for you when you're working on your projects at Kunda Kids?
[00:09:41] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Yeah, great question. So multifaceted.
Really means for me personally and how I see how, like how we serve our audiences is the fact that most of our customers and audiences are just like me, kids running around all over the place, crazy busy job, lots of laundry to do, bills that need to be paid, uh, calls that need to be called back. So I really understood that we are targeting people who are really time poor, but who was so well intended and invested into the future and the well being of the young people that they safeguard. Right? So I was like, how do we do everything that we want to do where it doesn't, it's not taking anybody to have to spend any extra time or spend so much money or go out of their way to experience this.
How do we meet you where you are at? And that's why like we started at books and the books was great, but we realized that, uh, people wanted to be able to experience stories on the go and at home and at school. Which is why we developed the Kunda Kids app. So on the Kunda Kids app you can read lots of stories and it's also something that's being rolled out into schools in the UK in the US and Canada, Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda and Kenya actually.
So we were like okay we need to do the whole story thing. But we also need to think about the format about making it easy, accessible, which is why we did the app. And then the other thing was screen time. So you know, Charlotte, we were talking about this, the fact that our children are four. So screen time is this thing that is both a positive and a negative influence in our lives as parents, it is the bane of our existence, but then sometimes the savior of everything to when you need to get something done. And I spent a lot of time sort of reading articles, white papers, doing a bit of research on screen time, and my, the conclusion that I came to is 1) it's not just about screen time. It's about the quality of screen time, right? And how we are doing screen time. And what I mean by that is I definitely think as many opportunities as you can have to have more of a practical interaction and an outside playtime with your child is great. And definitely let's all aim to not have more screen time than outside practical play.
But in saying that, how we do screen time is important. So for instance, screen time is great. Maybe when you want to get some laundry done or you need to wash it up and you just want to distract your kids, that's one use of it, but you find that children actually take in a lot more information, super more enthusiastic about things and receptive to what they're learning when they're watching it with you, when they're watching your responses when they're engaging with you as a collaborative occasion, right? And also having screen time that is less about like distraction and more about engagement. So I love programs that break the third wall. So they actually interact and speak directly to the kids. They give them opportunities and pauses to answer.
So I really wanted us to approach what's happening on TV, what's happening on YouTube with a different point of view. Specifically with more diverse characters as well, supplementing that, I think that's one thing that really struck out to me was how can we do things interestingly? How can we do story time and screen time in a, in a really good way?
And that's what we've done with Kunda Kids and Kunda & Friends, which is our YouTube show. It's a music led show, which is Afro beats and an African take on nursery rhymes that we love, and some new nursery rhymes too. And this is because, Charlotte, when you're in the car, I'm sure you get to a point where you're like, I cannot listen to any more, uh, nursery rhymes.
And we wanted to create music. We wanted to create programs that not only children were having a good time too, but adults were vibing with as well. And it wasn't torture for mom and dad to have to sit and watch it. So we found that engaging parents and getting them interested and invested and loving the content to create some much better environment for screen time and a much better, um, I guess, uh, occasion for everybody, really.
[00:14:17] Charlotte Cheng: I like that cause then you have a different type of learning experience for any occasion. You can be more involved or less involved, or you're in the car. There's opportunities for engagement and representation across all of those channels. And then you mentioned that you're from Uganda, your husband's from Nigeria.
We've talked about Black History Month that only tackled slavery. So how did you expand representation, you know, with all over 130 countries with that music, what are the strategies that you use to expand that representation in the products and projects that you create?
[00:14:50] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: I don't know if this is a strategy as much as it just feels to me to be common sense that we've wrapped up in a strategy, but essentially it's the fact, the fundamental single fact that learning about Africa is not just something for African people, right?
It is, or people of African descent, the same way that gender equality is not just a woman's issue. Right? Addressing systematic racism is not just something that minorities can do by themselves. Right? So that same approach we take to the kind of work that we do at Kunda Kids, where everybody can and should benefit from being able to learn something, one thing, lots of things about Africa, right? Because it is an entire continent, which I think by 2040, a quarter percent of the world population will be of African descent. So, you know, as Africans and as Black people, we're not going anywhere. So it's great to be able to have more of an inclusive narrative.
Right? When we got to start doing Kunda Kids, because I come from a sort of market research and insight background, I remember seeing that there was an upward trend in diverse books in the children's space. And what I mean by diverse books is going from like two to 4 percent of books with a Black lead character, which is progress.
It's not great progress, but it's progress. And I remember thinking to myself, "Hmm, I wonder who's writing these books, what is spurring this trend?" And what I saw was a lot of books being published, not all of course, but a sizable majority of books being published were not being published by minority authors.
It was the same authors, but just changing the color skin tone of the characters. But what you're missing there is cultural nuance and so much detail and the beauty is in the detail when it comes to storytelling. It's not just good enough to change the character to brown or olive skinned and think that that's going to do the job.
You know, absolutely not. So our main strategy back to your question is about making it important for people to understand that the same way. I love learning about French culture and I learned about the Eiffel Tower and I learned to say "Oui Oui" and all you know all these basic things that we know about French culture.
And German culture and Australia is the same way that we should be able to learn about Nigeria and Ghana and South Africa, and that we are doing the next generation a disservice by not giving them the opportunity to have a wholesome and enlightened educational experience, but everywhere in the world, we just want to focus on Africa because it's what we know that we know, but fundamentally thinking about race specifically. Minorities are not racist to themselves. So it is because there is a divide of information and experiences which causes ignorance. So I think one thing that's been quite unique to Kunda Kids is the fact that we've been able to get everybody involved in the conversation.
We want to make everybody interested in Africa. We want all the kids, you know, to be able to come and learn something new. And we want teachers not to feel like being part of this experience is making them feel like a racist or a racist by proxy. Right? And that being able to teach Black History should not be intimidating and something that actually causes anxiety because they're worried that they're going to get things wrong, or that they're going to end up on TMZ or the Shade Borough because they did something wrong.
No, we want to create an environment that we can ask all the questions. We can have all the support. And what we really want to do is just to provide an education and a great experience. So I think that's a single strategy. It's not making a Black thing about Black people only. It's about bringing everybody into the conversation and giving everybody a safe space.
[00:19:18] Charlotte Cheng: That's great. And yeah, I like the word safe space. We do that too in our video games. It's like this whole idea is when you feel safe, you're willing to explore and try new things, right? And so if you're putting them into a safe space to explore different countries in Africa, they're going to be more willing to explore because they feel safe.
And I think the same thing with an educator, if they feel like it's a safe environment for them to teach, they're going to be more willing to maybe teach outside of Black History Month, maybe every, every month, right?
[00:19:52] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Imagine that! Learning about Africa outside of the month.
[00:19:58] Charlotte Cheng: That would be amazing, right? If you like,
[00:20:00] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: ...you can dream, but no, absolutely.
And that, that is, you know, that's the whole point. That's what we want to be able to do, but we're just taking it in baby steps and just wanting parents and educators to know that they have a support system behind them to be able to ask questions, check on stuff, verify sources, have books, resources, posters, just knowing that they have an arsenal, because the fact that they even have the intention to do it is amazing.
So let's leverage that good intention and support it with good resources.
[00:20:37] Charlotte Cheng: Yeah. Reward them on the progress they've already made. I agree. Like that's how you build allies outside of just your minority group, right?
[00:20:45] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Exactly.
[00:20:46] Charlotte Cheng: Now, how could a platform like Kunda Kids grow into the future? Like where are your plans for the
future?
[00:20:52] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Oh my gosh. Oh, so, I mean, I spend a lot of time in an alternate universe where we're doing things that I don't even know that we have the technology to do. But for the most part, when this year began, I had a very, very, very clear vision about the fact that experiences was going to be the anchor for a lot of things that we're doing and how to really maximize experiences.
So I'll give you an example. You can buy Kunda Kids books on Amazon, on our website, bookstores, yada, yada, and people do, which is great and really happy about that. But usually when people buy online, they'll buy and we don't really hear from them again. But when we put a Kunda Kids event together, right? We're not an events company, but when we do a Kunda Kids event, when we do a meetup, when we do a pop up, when we do a takeover, it's almost always sold out.
People really don't really care about what books they're buying. They're just kind of just like, give me everything. And we get so much more feedback from people so like emails. It takes me a lot to email a company to say, "I really loved my experience with you." Like no news is good news as far as customers are concerned.
If they're not complaining, just, you know, for the most part, we'll assume that everything is okay. So when people take their time to email the company or to email me directly, it really means a lot to me because I assume, like I said, our majority target audience are time poor people. So the fact that they've been able to make that time to give me or us feedback is the ultimate compliment, honestly, personally.
So, saying all of that to say that one of the things that I really focused on this year was how do we create amazing experiences? How do we create those experiences in-person, locally, internationally, virtually, where somebody walks away from it and they feel like they need to let us know that they loved it.
Or even if they don't let us know, somebody else, your sister, your friend, the WhatsApp group chat, whatever. I think it's always lovely when that happens. And it's because that we've built something that's so much more than just our products. It's an experience. It's the coming together. We find that Kunda Kids parents, so the parents of the kids that are consuming Kunda Kids. They also really enjoy each other too. So we have like a like mindedness of parents that come together in our events, that they almost see our events as networking opportunities. Because one thing I realized, I'm sorry if I'm going on a tangent, Charlotte, but just one point that I really wanted to make was when I was pregnant.
I thought, "Oh, I need to make more mommy friends." And when I had my son, I did make mommy friends from nursery and stuff, but people assume that just because you've had a baby, that you have anything in common. And a lot of the time you don't. You know, and it's equally hard trying to find your tribe, especially your tribe going through your life stage with you at the moment, right?
Hard enough finding your tribe, now try and find your tribe that's also happy to breastfeed in public places or whatever it is. So, one thing I love about this kind of experience focus is that somehow it's gotten like minded people in the room. And it's almost as if, if you love Kunda Kids, there's an extent to which you're already buying into an ideology and a value system.
Right? A value system about embracing heritage, a value system about educating young people, a value system about parenting is hard but let's do what we can. So I think those combined values when people come together it just automatically seems to galvanize into a lovely experience. So for that reason, experiences has been one of my things and something that we're really working hard to see how to leverage, especially now that we're in a virtual reality web three AI phase where having experiences virtually is equally as important sometimes as having them in-person.
So this is one of the things that I'm very much looking at, and what I'm working towards achieving for us in the near future, and the future future.
[00:25:28] Charlotte Cheng: And it doesn't sound like just you're building experiences, you're building a community, right? Is that, that's just so empowering because then they can continue that progress in their own way, whether it's with their kids or in their work that they do.
Yeah, that's that's very inspiring. I'm excited I was like "Sign me up! Like how do I? I'm in California, so it's a little far, but like you said, yeah,
[00:25:53] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: I hope that we'll get to you soon. So I am planning on really having so much more of a footprint in the States. So we will do something. I'll, I'll find you Charlotte, somehow, somewhere else.
Make sure.
[00:26:06] Charlotte Cheng: Yes,
I will keep in touch. I might have some authors I want to introduce you to whenever that happens that are here and all about the work that you do too. Now, I love to close this off by giving some advice to people who are inspired by this conversation. So what advice would you give to someone who wants to increase multifaceted representation in the educational work that they do, whether that's in the classroom.
So how do I go beyond Black History Month or in the products that they're creating, whether it's a video game or some other platform where they're, they're trying to increase representation?
[00:26:41] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: I think there are a number of ways that you can probably go about that, but I think ultimately is to take it bit by bit, right?
So if you actually think about it and strip it back, it's quite a big task to think, "how do I improve representation in this thing that I'm doing?" It's quite gigantic in the scheme of things, and it's probably not something that will happen successfully by one or two single incidents or, you know, events or activations or initiatives, whatever.
It's probably something that you will achieve successfully over time by small intentional interventions that you do learn from, redo better learn from, get people involved and redo. So kind of a little bit like, uh, what do you call it?
[00:27:37] Charlotte Cheng: Iteration?
[00:27:38] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. Having a reiterative approach and not trying to slay a big dragon all in one time.
Right? So outline what your overall objective is. I think it's good to have an overall thing that you want to achieve and start by looking at what your easy wins are. What are your low hanging fruits? Where do you have influence? Where do you know that you have a class? If you're a teacher that you could do something interesting and that you have autonomy in, where do you have a voice that you can talk about stuff and just try one thing bit by bit first.
And then it will all come together and kind of grow on it. I think we put a lot of pressure on educators and even on, and even just, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as parents anyway, just as a function of being parents to try and do everything all at once, first time, win, no fail. And it's, I think it's, it's too much and unrealistic.
So my advice would be, think about what your overall objective is, highlight, maybe top five areas that you feel like you can have the most influence or the most impact and work on them systematically one by one work on one review one and see how to repeat it better next week or in your next session and then work on the next thing but just do it in bites when you try to tackle two especially, especially in this particular area of diversity and inclusion in children's content.
I've seen so many times, Charlotte, where actually it becomes less about the kids and more about building your own personal profile and feeding your ego as the D& I expert in this field that we've completely lost sight of just the, the everyday wins, right? And it becomes too much of a show, uh, and too performative.
So I would say, yeah, have an overall objective, but just focus on the small things first. Try out, for example, if you're a teacher and you buy a Kunda Kids book, we will give you, and we know when you're a teacher, if we don't know, sorry, if we do know, we will definitely do this. And if not, then we'll definitely reach out.
If we find out that you're a teacher, we give you a teacher's guide. So you might buy a book, let's say "A is for Africa", which is an ABC book on Africa. Then we will give you a teacher's guide. So that includes lots of classroom exercises, questions to ask your children, crossword puzzles, critical thinking exercises.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So just try small bits and see how that goes. Give feedback to one or two parents and see how that goes. And then grow from there and measure and document your impact. But I wouldn't worry too much about like trying to do too much all at once. It is it's a lot.
[00:30:32] Charlotte Cheng: Yes. I think it would be intimidating trying to tackle it all. And I love your idea of learning from each step as you go, because I felt the same way we've been doing DEI work at our company. And I had this plan. I had this great outline. And then whenever we started making progress, we had to shift. And it's okay to shift because you're not going to know until you explore, right?
[00:30:52] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So that's my advice on that.
[00:30:59] Charlotte Cheng: Well, thanks so much for joining us on this podcast, Louisa. I'm sure I've learned a lot from what you've done at Kunda Kids and all the best with you on your future work.
[00:31:07] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Thank you so much, Charlotte. It's a pleasure to have been on your podcast and always a blessing to be able to, to tell our story in any way, shape or form.
So thank you. And always lovely to speak to a mom going through the toddler phase. I always feel just a level of ease speaking to anybody in business and in storytelling, you know, with toddlers, because I, I know that we're all going through it. So it's always really refreshing and lovely to share ideas.
[00:31:36] Charlotte Cheng: Right. Exactly. It's a juggle and I agree just because you're a mom doesn't mean you're going to connect. But I feel like in many ways we can connect on many different levels as well.
[00:31:45] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: A hundred percent.
[00:31:47] Charlotte Cheng: All right. Thanks so much for joining.
[00:31:48] Louisa Kiwana Olafuyi: Thanks Charlotte. Bye.
[00:31:53] Charlotte Cheng: Thanks for listening to EdTech Adventures. Please subscribe to catch more of our episodes and leave a review to support the show. For more resources and info, visit us at CodeCombat.com/podcast. I'm your host, Charlotte Cheng. We'll see you on our next learning adventure.
