For Mary, the responsibilities of womanhood came more quickly for her than her fellow schoolmates back in 2002. At the age of eight, both of her parents passed away due to AIDS and witchcraft, which is both a sad tragedy but common for this African region. Having no brothers or sisters to care for, she quickly became a self-reliant, independent young woman. Without the financial support from relatives, she dropped out of school to pursue an underpaid, overworked career of digging in other families’ gardens. However, with a new job title of “earring maker” for Nu Intentions, Mary has been able work less in the garden and focus more on her dream to attend a vocational school to become a tailor.

Betty is an orphan and single child. During 2003, when the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) came to raid Kapelebyong, they found Betty's parents cultivating in the garden and slaughtered them both. Without parents or financial support from relatives, she had to drop out of school and now lives with her grandmother. If she saves enough money to go back to school, she wants to become a nurse.

Irene was impregnated when she was a late teenager by a soldier who later abandoned her without any child support. She is now a single mother with three children, forced to drop out of school to care for them. Due to scarcity of food and jobs, she struggles to feed or provide medicine for her children when they’re sick. Though she is still very young and has not yet passed primary school, she does not think she can return to school for her commitment to her children and no available child care.

Always seen wearing a bright yellow shirt and known for squirting water between the gap in her front teeth, Judith’s vibrant personality and sarcasm is always a source of entertainment. After meeting her immediate relatives, you’ll find out real quickly that spunkiness runs in the family. Living with her mother, grandmother, and two younger brothers, Judith’s family struggles to support themselves without a fatherly presence. After Judith’s mother contracted AIDS, her father blames their entire family for giving him AIDS and left for his two other wives. Although she is still in contact with her father, there is no more love in their relationship. Since he refuses to pay for her school fees, she resorts to digging in the garden with her mother or fetching water from the boar-hole for the cows from morning until night. As a Nu Intentions’ earring maker, Judith can now help financially support her family and provide them with essentials they had previously gone without.

Janet was impregnated when she was eighteen by a soldier and then was abandoned by him without any child support. Two years later, she was impregnated again and left to fend for herself. Being an orphan, she has no family support and resorts to digging in other people’s gardens for less than seventy-five cents a day. Her only relative is her grandmother, who has had liver problems for the past four years and cannot labor because of the pain, leaving Janet to care for her as well.

Gentle and soft-spoken, Sarah’s gift is her hospitality and motherhood. With four energetic children, (including a healthy baby girl named “Carrie”!), she is always balancing one on her hip while trying to keep the others out of trouble. She once lived in nearby village where she was happily living with her husband, until he found a new wife. With this new woman in his life, he took his anger out on Sarah and began beating her. Sarah quickly grabbed her children and fled back to Kapelebyong to live with her mother and father. And that is when we met. In addition to a comfortable income from her work at Nu Intentions, Sarah says she likes attending our savings & budgeting trainings and personal development meetings because she feels like she’s back at school.

Like many other girls in the camp, Jesca was impregnated by a man she thought she was in love with. But then he abandoned her to care for the child alone and she does not know of his whereabouts. Having no father, Jesca lives with her mother and siblings. Before she became impregnated, she was almost finished with high school, but had to drop out just before completion when she gave birth. She desperately wants to go back school when she saves enough money and will leave the child under her mother’s care.

Miriam is the youngest of the group and the only one attending school. She came to live with her aunt in Kapelebyong, but her aunt is always gone at the hospital with her children, leaving Miriam to fend for herself and her younger cousin (even though she has no financial support). Her father cannot afford to pay for her school fees because he has another wife and family to care for, so Miriam uses cash advances from our earring project to help pay for fees.