The Needs

 

With sayings like:

“tomorrow belongs to someone else,”

“Let me eat first,”​

hope is desperately needed. 

Median age

people that are 15 years old or older are HIV positive

%

of girls are married before 18 years old

%

of children were invloved in child labor

%

of children die from preventable conditions

%

of population is under 15 years old

%

of HIV infections are in women; of which 50% are between ages 15 and 24 years old

%

of children under 5 experience variations of stunted growth

children live on less than $1/day

%

of population is under 25 years old

%

of woman experience child abuse

%

of children experience multidemensional poverty

%

of population live below the international poverty line of $1.90/day

GDP per capita; Average earnings per person per year

A tribe living in the valley of death’s constant shadow. This may sound dramatic, but it’s no exaggeration. Consider what they face every day: 

  • Love and respect between parents and children is in rapid decline 
  • Parents and chiefs feel they have lost the next generation
  • A language in decline, and most likely destined to die without intervention 
  • A people ashamed of their identity, language and culture; an entire society that feels insecure and depressed 
  • A culture and society that is becoming unglued due to external pressures (much of it coming from the West directly or indirectly) 
  • A tribal leadership disempowered by colonialism and subsequent political-economic events – some of it the result of global powers
  • Polygamy is legal, and common 
  • They are a people who feel powerless and hopeless – with sayings like “Tomorrow belongs to someone else!” and “Let me eat first” — meaning “I need to focus on getting what I can today” and “I don’t know anything about the future” and “What will be, will be.” 
  • A people who are losing a sense of their past – where they are from (their history is oral), and who have lost hope for the future – who see no way forward, and so find themselves floundering in an endless and incomprehensible sequence of present moments 
  • Toxic social breakdown – diminished respect, almost no cooperation with each other or with their chiefs, profound cynicism and distrust