I'm supporting the initiative of the YOLRED organization due to the great job they're carrying on within the community.
I personally attended the  community cultural festival in 2019 and I perceived the great impact the project had on the community 

We enable former child soldiers and other victims to support each other in creating peaceful and productive lives in Uganda.

Northern Uganda, as the epicenter of the conflict between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), is relatively peaceful today but suffers from an unaddressed legacy of psychological trauma, stigmatization and distrust, high level illiteracy rate as well as safeguarding issues. This burden falls heavily on stigmatized former child soldiers who have returned to war-weary and traumatized communities. Social networks that are supposed to assist in healing community relations deteriorated during and after the
war. 

While many ex-combatants received psychosocial support while in the rehabilitation/reception centers, our community driven oral testimony research with former combatants clearly shows that these services were necessary but insufficient in the cause of reintegration. War-affected communities have understandable difficulty in accepting former combatants. The war eroded social norms and patterns, leaving families separated and relationship ties strained with weakened traditional and legal governing institutions and reduced access to basic services. 

Our Goals is to ensure that the severely traumatized young people of Northern Uganda living a Just, peaceful and productive lives

Our Mission is to help severely traumatized young people of Northern Uganda to become physically and psychologically healed and able to initiate and sustain their livelihoods.

Youth Leaders for Restoration and Development - YOLRED 

Mental Health

Culture

Education

1048940678

We are a nonprofit, so instead of charging fees we rely on the generosity of donors like you.

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Approximately 29,000-38,000 children have participated in the conflict of Northern Uganda, and whilst abduction and forced recruitment has declined in the region since 2009, former child-combatants are still trickling in slowly. These individuals have lived in captivity for many years, only to return as adults without ever having experienced freedom or peaceful co-existence with communities. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) are renowned for their large-scale recruitment and abduction of children who were forced to serve in their militia. Resultantly, the childhoods of thousands of girls and boys in Northern Uganda have been lost through their abduction, captivity, and fighting within this conflict, and their families and communities broken as a result. Many returnees still do not consider themselves free; they remain enslaved due to post-conflict struggles. The inadequate response by the government and international community has left many former abductees with little hope for a fruitful future, whilst also managing serious stigma and mental trauma.

Much of the existing literature about former child soldiers begins by drawing greatly on the atrocities committed by the LRA – with detailed descriptions of the suffering they subjected local populations to – whilst simultaneously attempting to highlight the plight for child abductees. Such dominant narratives become a hindrance when trying to provide assistance for former child soldiers, as their association with the LRA is the cause of much stigma and such literature perpetuates this, resulting in further disempowerment for many former child combatants. Consequently, these returnees get labelled as aggressive, angry, lazy, dangerous, and rebels which impacts their social, economic, and cultural rehabilitation as well as their emotional wellbeing. This project, therefore, will not focus on the atrocities of the LRA or former child soldiers (unless former abductees themselves wish to express them) as we do not deem this helpful for individual and community recovery, reintegration or healing. Instead, it is essential we provide a new narrative which is inclusive of the voices of former child soldiers in a way which humanizes them and their experiences, to allow for the deconstruction of many of the negative stereotypes about them. 
This project will utilize the creative art-based therapies of drama, music, film, and dance as a tool for social healing and reintegration of ex-child combatants in war-affected Northern Uganda. The project will display the marginalized voices and experiences of formerly abducted child-combatants during their time in captivity and their lives post-conflict. Additionally, there will be an in-country community cultural festival bringing together 300+ people for a day of creative arts-based performances in December this year with the aim of facilitating dialogue on several issues related to child-soldiery that were not addressed during post-conflict peacebuilding and remain overlooked even today.


 



Bila Pi Kuc: Creative Art-based Therapies for Reintegration 

.css-9izj2q{display:inline-block;--textSize:1.5rem;--lineHeight:1.7999999999999998rem;line-height:var(--lineHeight);font-size:var(--textSize);width:100%;}Youth Leaders for Restoration and Development - YOLRED

Youth Leaders for Restoration and Development - YOLRED