4 minute read
WATOTO NEIGHBOURHOOD
Africa’s greatest resource is her women, empowered. Women like Anna.
Anna was uneducated, abandoned and full of anxiety. Then she received counseling, education and business skills training through Watoto Neighbourhood and discovered a faith in Jesus. Today, she’s overcome her fear. She’s more than a leader who trains 40 women in her community. More than a tailor running her own business. She’s an empowered mother for her daughter Rebecca. And Anna is healed.
BETTY’S STORY
Riding her bicycle through town, you can see that Betty’s smile is infectious. But that wasn’t always the case. At 12 years old, Betty was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army and given to a rebel soldier as his wife. She spent the next nine years of her childhood living in captivity. While in the bush, she birthed and buried several children. Betty wanted to escape but knew that if they caught her, they would kill her. It was only when she realized that everyone around her was dying anyway that she finally decided to escape. After all that, when she returned to her family she was rejected and shunned.
When Betty joined Watoto Neighbourhood she received trauma counseling, discipleship and found release through forgiveness. She forgave the LRA, and she forgave her family. Betty also learned to sew and run a business. Today, she’s an empowered mother living on the land she worked to buy, and in the house she built for her family. In 2017, her youngest child, Faith, was given the opportunity to receive a quality education at a Watoto school.
Betty’s childhood was taken, but now she’s able to give her daughter the love and freedom to flourish—and she’s flourishing too.
AGNES’ STORY
Today, Agnes provides for her family. But people didn’t always believe in her potential. Agnes’ father didn’t want to waste money sending his daughter to school and threw her out of the home as a young girl. With limited options, Agnes got married at 16 years old. When she was pregnant with her fifth child, her husband died and she discovered she was HIV+. With no way to provide for her family, she took her children and they slept in an old, abandoned railroad car. It became their home for five years.
When Watoto Neighbourhood launched in 2008, Agnes was among the first women to join. For the first time in her life, she received an education and she thrived learning business skills. In Agnes’ hands, her first chicken was multiplied into more chickens, which she sold for a goat, which then became a herd of cows. With the money she earned, she has been able to buy land, many animals and build a house and a small shop.
To her children and grandchildren, Agnes is a role model who is doing everything she can to give them a bright future.
-Hamidah,
Neighbourhood Mother
HAMIDAH’S STORY
Since joining Watoto Neighbourhood, Hamidah’s found freedom from the scars of her past. She’s discovered the power of telling her story, for herself and for others.
When Hamidah was 14 years old, she was kidnapped and trafficked into a neighbouring country. Locked in a windowless room, she was raped and kept as a slave for almost two years.
“The room was so dark, I didn’t know if it was night or day. A man would rape me. His son would visit too, and a third man. If I refused, they would starve and beat me. I still have the scars on my back.”
Eventually Hamidah tried to escape, but was returned to her captors. After many months had passed, she tried again. This time she succeeded.
“When I finally arrived home in Uganda, I learned my mother had died from the heartbreak of losing me. And because of the trauma I experienced, a part of me had died too.”
Then, Hamidah learned she was HIV+ and three months pregnant. She felt like her future was gone. “When I gave birth they had to beg me to feed my son, because when I looked at him, I remembered the days in captivity and the people who raped me and beat me. But my grandmother told me that God knew why I had become pregnant and that the child would be like an angel to me.”
In 2016, Hamidah was invited by a friend to Watoto. Soon after she was welcomed into our Neighbourhood center for help and offered a job in the café.
“In discipleship classes they talked about forgiveness, and for the first time I shared my story—the whole story—in front of 100 women. I was able to forgive. When I look at my son now, I forget all the pain I suffered and he gives me joy. I know he doesn’t have a father, but I know we have a Father in God, and He’s a good Father.”
Soon afterwards, we told Hamidah that we would provide for her son’s education. For her, it was an answer to prayer.
“I want to thank everyone at Watoto who’s accepted me and shown me love. Before, when I would shake someone’s hand, they’d go and get soap to wash away the touch. It means so much that I can tell my story and people will still sit with me and hug me. Thank you for accepting me and for your love and kindness.”
