"My name is Ruth Nakato. I was born in 1994 in Masaka district Kijonjo village, Narozaali Parish, Uganda. I grew up in a family of thirteen, in which I was the first in line as we were six biological children, I am a twin and have my twin brother, and the rest of the kids were from Mom's family and relatives. "
I had a loving father who wanted the best for his children in the world but unfortunately he had a bad hearted wife after the death of my mother. My twin brother and I were still little kids by the time when she passed on. And so the lady in the house was our stepmom. This lady really treated I and my twin brother like we had a very different colour of blood
Due to financial hardships, the untimely passing of my mother and lack of parental love, my brother and I received a little formal education that saw me incomplete the highest secondary level in the education system of Uganda, as step mum used to keep saying that Dad was always having his little money wasted on our education and so he stopped paying school fees for us.
After school I and my twin brother engaged in a lot of manual labor which provided little pay, mainly to ensure that we could receive what to eat and where to sleep so that we could survive.
Together with my twin brother, we managed to sustain life.
In our cultural setting, a girl who has attained full breasts and is old enough to handle domestic work is deemed fit for marriage. And I learned domestic work at an early age as I could always do hard work at home.
In this way, at the age of seventeen, with no more chances of further education, I got married. It was not the ordinary church marriage, but rather that bond which survives out of love and responsibility. The bond that you create not because it's what you want but because it's what you need. That is how I got married and started taking on marriage responsibilities. In my married life, things were not so easy after giving birth to a baby girl but I survived by the Lord's grace. My husband wasn't good to me. I had to give up all kinds of life and take good care of my girl.
Two years later I was kicked out of the house by my daughter's dad as he hat gotten another woman. I had to run back to my twin brother who had built a house with a dirt floor, traditional roofing, non plastered, but he still thanked God because he had a roof on his head.
By this time, my twin brother was working in the community 's fields to earn a living and when I joined him, I did too. When in the fields, I met many other needy people from the community.
I asked permission from my brother to bring some of them home and he accepted. I brought a mother to two kids who were really badly off the situation. I begun giving good care to her and the kids and later she moved her life on.
I later widened the kindness and beauty of my heart by founding an organization. And I named it; SaveAbusedYoungMothersFoundation
Due to financial hardships and shortage of help and support, my organization didn't manage to grow quickly though so many people from the community keep on requesting help.
Unfortunately there also came the pandemic. My heart keeps and keeps in tears as I see young mothers with their kids starve and being kicked out of the houses.
As we struggle in life, we keep being accompanied by young mothers and children from different walks of life. Some are orphans whose parents died in the pandemic, others are from the very poor and needy families in the community and the rest were abandoned by their caretakers after the coming of the pandemic.
I cannot stay with whoever comes to me because I also live in a single room house and I still live with some two kids, one of 16years and another one of 2years. I try to help some of the rest as I can from where they are.
I pray that God touches these poor lives and brings help and support towards them. I'm also grateful to have you become part of this change"
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