Patongo Counselling Community Outreach programme - Equipping resilient survivors to rebuild their lives

Network for Africa’s groundbreaking counselling outreach programme alleviates the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and its associated social and economic problems.

Patongo hosted tens of thousands of refugees and was regularly raided by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) during a war that lasted for 22 bloody years.  Thousands were killed, millions were displaced, and the LRA abducted more than 50,000 children, forcing them to be soldiers, porters and sex slaves. Almost everyone was forced to abandon their farms to live in dismal and squalid refugee camps, where they have been for more than 20 years.  The war stopped only recently and while many international NGOs have been and continue to be active in Gulu to the west, Patongo was largely neglected, as it was deemed to be too dangerous.

The violence has now moved elsewhere, but the devastating legacy of fear remains.  Patongo had few resources even before the war, and there is little support for thousands of otherwise resilient people who are almost paralysed by psychological trauma, struggling to rebuild their lives.  Network for Africa has worked with local partners to create the groundbreaking Patongo Counselling Community Outreach (PCCO) programme.  PCCO aims to transform the choices in people’s lives by alleviating the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and its associated social and economic problems.

Ten respected community leaders have been selected by programme director Constantine Odong [link to Constantine’s biog?] to receive in-depth training in counselling skills from volunteer psychotherapists Dr. Barbara Bauer and Shelley Evans. The community leaders are known as Outreach Counselors (OCs).

Once trained, the OCs work in pairs (one woman, one man), taking responsibility for counselling trauma victims in outlying communities.  Each pair has already identified two communities where they have existing links; a total of twenty communities are being served by the programme. Cycling around Patongo, every week these counsellors will be meeting in huts or sitting in the shade under Mango trees and helping small groups of local people work towards supporting each other and rebuild their communities.

The programme will develop to respond to requests from the counsellors for further training in leadership and business skills so that they can offer their beneficiary groups all-round support, including help with income generating activities.  This network has the potential to transform the life chances of thousands of people, giving them opportunities to rebuild their lives and communities. Our ultimate objective is to strengthen and empower civil society, where people are responsible for shaping their futures.