EXODUS
Today, Exodus is a community leader and a school principal. She founded a non-profit school in an impoverished community in East Africa.
THIS IS HER STORY
Exodus had felt increasingly fed up with the commercial sex industry, but she could not see a way out. She had met the Sons & Daughters outreach team regularly over several months. Exodus eventually made the brave choice to leave the sex industry when she learned about S&D’s 12-month Aftercare program.
Exodus moved into Family Home, the S&D transition accommodation. Supported financially by S&D, she completed a professional certificate in baking. She conducted her own online fundraising campaign to buy equipment and prepared to open a baking business back home in East Africa.
After Exodus moved back to Africa, she found that her initial idea of a baking business would not be sustainable in an impoverished community, and she needed to change tack again. As she re-strategized, Exodus realized that she had built spiritual discipline and personal fortitude during the time she spent in the S&D Aftercare program.
There was daily Bible reading and worship at the Family Home. Through this experience, Exodus said that she learned valuable communication and conflict resolution skills.
“I found my voice,” she said.
“I learned that my opinion counted.”
Exodus' favourite story or character in the Bible.
“I see parallels between the book of Exodus and my own life – a journey from slavery to the Promised Land, which for me was S&D’s Family Home, and then to my homeland. Going home was the beginning of my story.”
It was this spiritual discipline and personal fortitude that enabled her to recover after the baking business folded and she went through several months feeling lost. Exodus soon discovered that God had bigger plans for her life when her attention was drawn to the children in her community whose parents could not afford to send them to school. She knew that the little girls were headed down the same road from which she had just departed. She put together an application to register as a school. She found her board of directors. Sons & Daughters helped connect her with a charitable foundation in her country that provided the seed funding.
Today, the non-profit school provides an education for more than 40 children who otherwise cannot afford to go to school.
During the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 when schools were closed, Exodus turned the school into a community center and had her team of teachers pack essential items into care packages for the community.
Another favourite story of Exodus