Named after Terenke the Elder, indigenous wise woman, healer and midwife, was forcibly taken from her remote mountain hut, beaten, kicked and left for dead by an Ethiopian Orthodox priest. She brought herself back from death but was permanently bent at a 90 degree angle at the hip. Terenke died a few years later but knowing that Healers would come (to a WISN organized gathering of international healers in Ethiopia). She said, I live in the dream of my people. If I die tonight I die happy knowing my culture will live.’
Young, indigenous, Oromo (southern Ethiopia highlands) girls had to travel long distances or be moved to urban areas for education. This subjected them to trafficking and abuse. WISN supported the building of a local school in Wobera; creating income generating rural ‘Enset’ farming and women’s traditional loom weaving.