PROJECTS
Red Earth RISING believes that many of our seemingly insurmountable global problems can be addressed by improving the status of women and girls throughout the developing world.
1
N'Ya Dala Village
(My Daughter's Home)
We focus on the poorest of Africa's poor: the refugee adolescent mother & child. Our goal is to help these young mothers uplift themselves and their children. This is a second chance many adolescent mothers never get. Born and raised during Uganda's 26 year long civil war, these girls have lost most, if not all, their family and role models to violence, HIV/AIDS, mental illness, and starvation. Schools, hospitals, and neglected infrastructure have left very few, if any, resources available to rise up from such devastating beginnings.
In 2014, Red Earth Rising (RER) devised and built N'Ya Dala (My Daughter's Home)--the first "Instructional Village" for teen moms in the northern Uganda. Our community life is centered around self improvement, individual and community responsibility, daily vocational lessons, leadership skills all the while placing emphasis on the traditional Acholi ways and values.
Before coming to N'Ya Dala, these girls were living deep in the bush, forced to leave school prematurely, lacking basic health & sanitation information, and with no one to support, teach or advise them. Our yearlong curriculum welcomes young mothers and their respective child to come live together in an authentic Acholi village focused on practical but essential knowledge.
The young teen moms that we assist are a gravely undeserved population. But for Red Earth RISING’s assistance—they would have no other means of creating a secure life for themselves and their child, learn a vocation or the self-empowerment skills needed to be a self sufficient citizen and community leader.
We are slowing creating a new generation of young mothers who are self sufficient when they leave us and who are dedicated to passing on their knowledge to other young mothers through our Hummingbird Project--Red Earth Rising's satellite community outreach program.
2
Big Sister Project
Wonderful things have been happening to the resident teen moms at N'Ya Dala. They leave our village armed with a vocation and a well rounded education for life. These young moms can now support their child and themselves. All of them look forward to paying the school fees to educate their children.
Many community girls would ask mid-session if they could join our classes. To meet the dual demand of empowering other community teen moms as well as encouraging our N'Ya Dala graduates to become community leaders who share their knowledge, we now have an outreach program that sends our graduates out into the bush to teach for wages. We are reaching more girls right we they live. Larger trainings are offered in the N'ya Dala Centre periodically, but bi-weekly meetings are held at the Red Earth Rising's Big Sister Project School locations spread throughout northeastern Uganda. Girls learn to become tailors, speak comfortably in English and get they skills they need to be good mothers to their babies.