Total Impact House

Last week the POH team had the distinct honor of reuniting Joyce, after a two year separation, with her beautiful daughter Nelly.

Six of us piled into the car with Joyce and traveled north – deep into the Ugandan bush – to her home village. Being there to share in her mounting, infectious joy was inexplicable. By the time the village was finally in view, Joyce could hardly contain her excitement. The space within the car was positively electric as she laughed, clapped, and bounced in her seat. We were that much more captivated by her elation because Joyce is usually quiet and reserved.

Her reaction was also undeniably profound. Notwithstanding the joyous occasion, the team and I were acutely aware that we were entering the very place we’d heard about, the place rife with the traumatic memories she’s been working so hard to overcome.

And yet, the love Joyce has for her daughter outweighed her natural inclination to retreat from the origin of those deep wounds. It was because of that, the team was not only introduced to her history, but deeply humbled after recognizing the part we’ve been allowed to play in her healing and restoration at the Total Impact House.

It was a day that was life-changing for all of us and no words can express how grateful we all feel to be doing what we are doing.

See more Pictures at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=256385&id=151054414448

In a few short days I’ll once again be heading to Uganda. Once there, my time will be split between the Bwaise Drop-In Center and the Total Impact House in Gulu. And while both projects have my heart, a particular occasion in Gulu, an inaugural milestone that represents the miraculous has me counting the days to my arrival up north.

What is it? Our first resident, Joyce, completed her education and has expressed the desire to live independently. Last month Joyce graduated from her catering program, fulfilled the requirements of her internship and is now ready to pursue full-time employment at a local, well-known restaurant. For the first time in her life she is equipped and ready to provide for her child while fulfilling her dream of becoming a chef.

Two years ago the actualization of this seemed completely incomprehensible. I think, perhaps, for she and I both!

Joyce has a very special place in my heart and at POH. She was the first to be accepted into the Total Impact House. An entire year before Total Attorneys made the commitment to sponsor the house in Gulu, she continued to meet with Pauline, one of our counselors, while never losing faith that one day there would be a house, and that one day she would live in it. Now, that one day has come for her to leave the very house she so earnestly prayed for. She is ready to give her spot to someone else.

I understand it gets confusing, discerning the copious programs between the two cities. Yes, we’ve reported on the many young women in Bwaise graduating our vocational training courses. Joyce, however, is our first in Gulu and the Total Impact House in Gulu is our flagship project, our baby, and considerably more comprehensive in it’s programing and approach. Seeing where Joyce is today, the progress she’s made, tells us something is working, quite beautifully in fact.

My hope for this next week is to spend a good amount of time with Joyce. With her permission, I’d like to interview her and have her share in detail what the past 15 months have been like for her, what her immediate plans are, and what she sees for her future. We’re even traveling to her village so she can visit her child whom Joyce, because of her committed effort toward a better life, hasn’t seen in a very long time.

So, congratulations Joyce and Thank you Total Attorneys! There will certainly be more to follow!

Kristen

As you’ve probably gathered from Annet’s interview and other POH posts, there’s a tremendous emphasis on education in Uganda.  Without it, quite simply, children are doomed to a life of abject poverty, and in many cases, prostitution.  Though I certainly believe that educating young women is paramount to their future success, it pales in comparison to them feeling truly loved and cared for.  

What’s beautiful is that they are feeling loved because we’re sending them to school.  To care about them is to care about their futures.  Our girls are awed by such a generous outpouring of love and support and as we’ve stated many times before, they are now pouring that into others.   

Annet wants to be a lawyer.  I have no doubt that she will be a great one – not just because her school fees are currently being covered, but because she knows we are rooting for her and hundreds of people want to see her succeed.  With that she can conquer the world!

Personally, there is nothing that motivates me more than this.  I hear many stories of insidious abuse and incomprehensible circumstances that would leave even the most stoic person burning for justice, and yes, they do make me want to fight harder, yell louder and rally whomever will listen.  But the driving force behind what keeps me doing this is when I ask any one of the girls that’s been in the program for a few months, “Do you know you are loved?” and I receive an emphatic YES, just like Annet’s.  

Love is what removed them from the insidious abuse and incomprehensible circumstances in the first place, and it is love, married with action, that will enable them to grow and heal.

I encourage you to please share Annet’s story with others.  It’s giving her a voice and the power affect change.   

- Kristen

Annet was born in Northern Uganda in 1993, six years after Joseph Kony formed The Lord’s Resistance Army to incite an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government. For well over twenty years the LRA has been responsible for pandemic devastation including murder, rape, abduction, mutilation, forcing children to participate in hostilities, and the sexual enslavement of women and children.

For us, it’s a sobering history lesson. For Annet, it’s been a living hell.

When she was young, her father was abducted from their home, leaving her mother and seven siblings to fend for themselves. Two other relatives were told they’d be spared if they killed others in the village. They did and were not. Her best friend was abducted at the age of nine. “One day we were playing,” Annett explained, “and the next day she was gone.” Annet tried to continue with her studies, but it was impossible when constantly having to flee from militant rebels. Her mother eventually sent her to a school many miles away, but shortly thereafter failed to pay the school fees. Annet was left to take care of herself. She fell prey to a life of prostitution at the age of 13.

Annet’s interview is divided into three short segments. In the first video, she describes how she and her family were affected by the LRA. In the second video, Annet unravels how she came to live on the streets. And in the final installment, she talks about life in the Total Impact House.

There are, among the POH girls, seemingly countless new achievements, and we want to share and celebrate them all. What we can’t do, however, as we continually move forward, is forget where it is they came from, what they have survived and what each of their harrowing stories can teach us. I am grateful for Annet’s willingness to grant us a glimpse of the incomprehensible.

She represents many. It is nearly impossible to find a Northern Ugandan not scarred, either physically or psychologically, by the war. The statistics vary, of course, but it’s been estimated that nearly one million Northern Ugandans have been driven from their homes because of the LRA. Over a quarter of a million have been murdered, and most sickeningly, thousands of the country’s most vulnerable, the children, have been turned into orphans, sex slaves, prostitutes, or killing machines.

POH’s mission is to provide aftercare to girls who have been trafficked and/or forced into the commercial sex industry. Part of that care includes giving the girls a voice and empowering them through their testimony. It’s my prayer that as Annet speaks, we will listen. Really listen.

Then act.

-Kristen