MUTERA Global Healing formerly known as EDJA.
History of EDJA
In 2015, on a visit to volunteer at Nyaka, a non-profit in Southwestern Uganda that provides free education for approximately 800 children orphaned by AIDS, Tabitha Mpamira encountered a second-grade student who had been raped the day before. Although the girl’s family knew about the rape and knew her 35-year-old assailant, they did not know how to help her.
Having experienced complex trauma herself as a child, Tabitha understood that a vulnerable nine-year-old, if she had any hopes of recovering, would need medical, legal, and mental health support. She also would need the $12 (half an average Ugandan monthly income) the police required to arrest the rapist, who had offered the family a goat in exchange for his assault. In meeting these immediate needs for the little girl and her family, Tabitha created a story that rapidly made the rounds of the community. But it was the next day, when a five-year-old appeared at the school, raped by her HIV/AIDS-infected grandfather, that Tabitha said, Enough is enough; this sexual violence must stop now. And EDJA was born.
In just a few years, EDJA (named for Tabitha’s mother, Edith, and mother-in-law Janet) has supported hundreds of survivors—female and male, from ages 4 to 90—to provide counseling, legal advocacy, and medical services in the Rukungiri and Kanungu districts in Southwest Uganda.
