Training Update: Dancing in Uganda

Oct 15, 2014by Kohl Crecelius

Dancing for Empowerment Gulu, Uganda Yes, dance training is definitely part of our empowerment curriculum. In Uganda, dancing is more than a fun activity for a group of friends on a Friday night. Historically dancing has held much deeper cultural meaning. For thousands of years the Acholi people lived without books, pen and paper and as a result they relied on drama and dancing to pass their cultural narratives and values down the generations. Over the millennia they developed dances for everything from births, to marriages, to funerals. Today, even as Uganda modernizes, dancing holds just as much meaning as it did in the past. New dramas and dances are constantly created to help a new generation find their place in changing world. For KK Uganda specifically, dance is a meaningful way to communicate the empowerment process. Together with the women, we’ve adapted many traditional dances to explain the journey that KK Uganda participants are on. Very rarely do we have a celebration at the office without performing these dances. We especially love to dance for the new women that are brought into the program. It’s an amazing way to invite the new hires into the 3-year journey towards empowerment that they are embarking on. Below are a few photos of our most recent dance training. We were invited to perform our dances at Gulu Municipality's Annual Independence Day celebration. A group of 15 KK Uganda participants performed our empowerment dances for all of Gulu to see. Needless to say, we wanted to impress.