Viewing on your desktop?

Use your mouse to click and drag the picture to look around.

Viewing on your phone?

Open the video on the YouTube app. You can tap and drag the screen to look around or simply move your phone around to explore.

For an immersive virtual reality experience:

Watch with VR goggles or use Google Cardboard through the YouTube mobile app.

Assemble Google Cardboard.
Open the YouTube app.
Search for and select the “Growing New Roots” film.
To start playback, tap the play button.
Tap the Cardboard icon . The screen split will split into two smaller screens.
Insert your phone into Cardboard.
Look around to view “Growing New Roots” in 360 degrees.

Growing New Roots

Told through the experiences of a Batwa mother, DIG’s “Growing New Roots” VR film takes the viewer on an immersive journey. You will learn how DIG has been partnering with this unique community to better feed their families and restore their severed connection to the land.

The sweeping, 360-degree views will transport you to Southwest Uganda where the distinct line of the forest’s edge now separates the Batwa from their past, as they put down new roots and reestablish their relationship with the land.

The Story of the Batwa

The story of the Batwa people of Southwestern Uganda has been tragic, but it’s a story that is still being written. To understand it, you must root yourself in the land, and the Batwa’s connection to it.

The Batwa, once derogatorily referred to as pygmies, are an ancient tribe. The forests where they lived are some of the most biologically diverse on Earth, home to thousands of unique species of animals and plants, most notably, the critically-endangered mountain gorillas.

In the early 1990s, in the name of conservation, the Batwa were evicted from their forest home. Entering the land that once sustained them as hunter-gathers, and defined their cultural identity, is now forbidden.

Today, they are left to build new relationships to the land outside the forest, and both their future and that of conservation now depend upon their success.