Work is underway in war-torn northern Uganda to design and launch a supportive, sustainable community for affected children to provide sanctuary, emotional and spiritual support, formal education, vocational training, and reintegration with families and communities.
For 20 years, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has been terrorizing communities in northern Uganda in a brutal civil war. The area worst affected is the central region of Uganda and the surrounding regions north to the Sudanese border.
An estimated 12,000 people have been killed in the violence, with many more dying from disease and malnutrition as a direct result of the conflict. More than 90% of northern Ugandans, nearly two million strong, have been displaced from their rural homes and are interned in "protected camps" established by the Ugandan government near army installations. What was intended as temporary housing has become permanent for hundreds of thousands as the conflict drags on. Crowded conditions and lack of food and sanitation facilities have rendered the camp population vulnerable to malnutrition, disease and death - many of them children. Over 1000 people are dying in these camps each week.
The LRA has abducted more than 25,000 children and terrorized them at their clandestine bases into virtual slavery as guards, concubines, and soldiers. In addition to being beaten, raped, and forced to march until exhausted, abducted children are routinely forced to participate in the killing of other children who attempt escape. In addition to the thousands who have been abducted, thousands more have been killed, maimed, brutalized, and used to undertake the worst atrocities imaginable, including murder, rape, theft, and the like - and often on the very communities from which the abductees originate.
Partnering with Action For Children, a Ugandan social services organization, we propose to construct a center in northern Uganda where children affected by war can live in a supportive community until they are emotionally, spiritually, and physically restored; educated; trained in a profession; and prepared to earn a living. The center will serve children who are formerly abducted, including child mothers and their babies; children who are orphaned by war; and other displaced children whose families and relatives are unable to provide for them because of the war. Children living at the center can stay as long as they need to - until they are ready to emancipate.
As northern Uganda is largely agriculture-based, the center will be built in a rural location with access to farm land. This will afford us the ability to develop a strong agriculture program to provide food for the center, vocational training for the children, and income from the sale of produce and livestock products. Care will be taken to ensure that the location is not too isolated, so that proximity to existing communities and churches can benefit the eventual integration of center graduates into outside communities.
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