Women's hands selecting rice grains for dinner at the social center…

Women's hands selecting rice grains for dinner at the social center Gulu, Uganda.

This is a hopeful story, it is good to know we have people working to rebuild the damage caused by the civil war in Uganda. The SOS Social Centre is teaching agricultural skills to young adults. I like the idea of a new generation of farmers for a new country. This is the story of the argicultural training center in  Gulu.

The SOS Emergency Relief Project in Gulu northern Uganda was established in 2002 to cater for children orphaned and abandoned by the long civil war in the north, to help reintegrate youth, particularly former child soldiers, into the community and to help the community at large with medical facilities. It was established at a time when many child soldiers were escaping or were being released by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) which had abducted them. Since then, although the war has not yet ended, the situation is beginning to normalise and people are looking forward to leading ordinary lives once again. However, for some youth, who have known nothing else but war, it is not easy. That is where the SOS Social Centre Gulu is playing its part.

Anne Kipwola is the social centre co-ordinator and her responsibility includes the clinic, the day care centre and the youth programmes, currently funded in partnership with the Austrian Development Association. One of her youth programmes is the reintegration of youth through agricultural skills (others are training in tailoring and embroidery, carpentry, brick laying and concrete production). She explained that there is limited land in the area but it is fertile and can be used scientifically in order to get a high yield, either by growing vegetables or rearing goats.

Self help youth groups have been set up with the encouragement of the division leaders in the municipality and the programme targets six of these groups with a total of 240 members. The youth, who include those who have been abducted, child mothers, heads of households, orphans, and even school children, are taught on demonstration plots by trainers from a partner organisation called Africa 2000. They are taught to grow many crops including tomatoes, rice, maize, watermelon, avocadoes, onions, cabbage etc. They are also trained in goat rearing and after they have constructed standard goat shades with appropriate technology, they are given a pregnant goat to look after. Once the goat has produced two kids they must pass other kids onto members of the group who start the process again. In this way the youth can begin to earn a living by selling the goat's milk and the more goats they acquire the better their standard of living improves.

Alex, a member of a youth group, is about 20 years and he was given a goat. Meanwhile he also had the opportunity to return to school in Kampala, so his family is looking after the goat for him. It has already reproduced and the family, obviously industrious, are trying their hand at cross breeding. Due to a shortage of grazing land and the risk of disease, the goats are kept in a raised pen and are the pride of the family.

Alex's family is typically African - extended - consisting of many members, including grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles and cousins. They live on one large compound and support themselves by agriculture and wage earners. Because of the long standing insecurity in the area, the twelve children do not sleep at the compound but instead go to a shelter at a nearby children's home, returning to their parents every morning. David, Alex's brother, is planning for the future and is building a large family house, using home made bricks, which will give much better security for the future. When it is ready he hopes the children will once again be able to sleep at home. So far he has completed one of the eleven planned rooms, but the walls of the others are going up fast. The new house will replace the traditional huts that so many people inhabit in northern Uganda, which provide reasonable shelter but have proved to lack adequate defence against rebel bullets.

Like many other young people in the area, affected by 20 years of war, Alex has had the opportunity to receive a fresh start. He has learnt how to grow crops with a high yield and how to rear goats and he has passed this information on to his extended family who have taken up the task while he is away. When Alex returns from his studies in Kampala he will be able to make use of his new found skills in a way that will benefit not only his family but members of his youth group. And the process will continue, passing from one person to the next, bringing hope of prosperity to an area once ravaged by war.