See Maasai Development Initiative

ISMDI?s goal is to build a self-sustaining village to accommodate young Maasai girls who decide to forgo the circumcision practiced for generations by their culture. Maasai girls who reject the ceremonial practice are disowned by their families and rejected by their community for failing to meet the expectations and tradition of their people. For most of the 9-12 year old Massai girls who do undergo the circumcision, a lifetime of immense physical and psychological agony results. After the girls are horrifically stripped bare of their external sexual organs, one in five die. For the survivors both physical intimacy and childbirth become painful experiences that recall the nightmare of their mutilation. Besides building a village to take in the young Maasai refugees, ISMDI is out to educate the Massai people of the brutal consequences of female genital mutilation while creating alternative rites of passage ceremonies for the culture to embrace.