Help Revitalise Our Nubian Cultural Heritage
Help preserve and revitalise our Nubian cultural heritage and endangered languages.
For over 52 years, Nubians have struggled to preserve their cultural heritage while hoping to return to the banks of the Nile. We cofounded the Nubia Initiative through which we curate community-centred trans-boundary projects on Nubian (in)tangible heritage preservation, and sustainable socio-economic development of in Sudan, Egypt and the diaspora. (More on that later.)
Ancient Nubia : the region in northeastern Africa, extending approximately from the Nile River valley (near the first cataract in Upper Egypt) eastward to the Red Sea, southward to about Khartoum in Sudan, and westward to the Libyan Desert. We focus on Nubian communities based out of both Egypt and Sudan, though officially citizens of 2 different countries, are bound by history, heritage and their endangered languages. That said, we acknowledge that today, there are Nubians in Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea among others and hope to grow our capacity enough to join efforts in preserving our heritage.
Why Nubian heritage?
Because our heritage is rich and vast, and there is still so much more we don't know about it. Don't take our word for it yet..please keep reading!
Do you know what experts in the field say about Nubian heritage?
“Today, archaeologists are realizing how wrong their predecessors were — and how little time they have left to uncover and fully understand Nubia’s historical significance.”– Amy Maxmen, Nature Magazine
“You cannot go 50 kilometers along the Nile River Valley without finding an important site because humans spent thousands of years here in the same place, from prehistoric to modern times” - Vincent Francigny, French Archeological Unit in Khartoum, Sudan
“But just as we are becoming aware it’s there, it’s gone...most of ancient Nubia might be swept away.” - David Edwards, University of Leicester
What is the Nubia Initiative (TNI) ?
Co-founded by two Nubian sisters, Dahlia and Dimah Mahmoud , TNI is a Washington DC-registered transboundary non-political, not-for-profit organisation.
As young Nubians in the diaspora, we each had different but equally disappointing introductions to our heritage as we quickly learned that it is as endangered as it is rich. Ambitious and determined as we both are, we decided to put our heads together and do something about it. We started working on building out network in 2016 and registered in 2017.
Our Mission : Leverage arts, academia and technology to protect, preserve and promote Nubian heritage and endangered languages.
Where is your money going ?
As a non-political young and youth-led organisation, we are still finding our ground for financial support and the hesitation to support our efforts and programs is understandable. This is why we had to assume the costs for our inaugural conference and all other activities personally.
Your support will help us move forward by facilitating our development of :
• Revitalising Endangered Nubian Languages
Through building the classroom at the community cultural heritage centre now underway inKabaaga, Northern State, Sudan. Our cofounder Dimah has relocated to her village and is converting her family home into a community cultural heritage centre .The centre will have a room for workshops on reviving basketry and traditional handicrafts. More importantly, it will have a language classroom to teach the speaking and writing of our endangered Nubian languages. We will be working with the centre for Nubian studies in Khartoum to hold training workshops for local school teachers on how to teach the Nubian language, so they may teach the children after school and during holidays. They can then also hold them as classes to visiting researchers and would be a source of income for them/their village. 
It is our goal to give these classes to the locals for free. Your support will help facilitate this.
• Documentary
We are working on a documentary focusing on untold stories and culture continuity. It will feature oral histories through untold and forgotten stories. The outcome will be a part of our digital archive on Nubian heritage.
• NubiaFEST2020 and beyond!
We are tremendously proud of our partnership with the Union for Nubian Studies that has birthed the perfect albeit embryonic product of the bridging and marriage of community and academia: NubiaFest2020 . This baby that has by it's 3rd day brought together more than 3000 members of Nubian communities, scholars on Nubian studies and #LoversOfNubia gives much promise to our vision of a virtual Certified Nubian Studies Body of both traditional and scientific learning coming together in harmony as any genuine study should endeavour.
Please visit www.facebook.com/NubiaFEST2020 to have an idea about the kind of collaboration and community we want to continue building so we may be the bridge not only between Nubians on mainland and diaspora, or Nubian communities and academia but ultimately a bridge between the past and the future. #NubiaConnects
