Counselling, Northern Uganda

Our volunteer psychotherapists teach lay counsellors to give support to survivors of the notoriously vicious Lord’s Resistance Army in an isolated area in Northern Uganda. We also support and train women’s groups to establish small income generating projects; and teach HIV-AIDS mitigation and family planning with community groups, young people and in prisons.

For more than two decades the extreme Lord’s Resistance Army LRA has terrorised the Acholi people of northern Uganda. The LRA has temporarily moved its bases into neighbouring southern Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic. However, they have left in their wake emotional, physical and economic devastation.

Network For Africa works in Patongo, an obscure area overlooked by the big international aid groups. We were asked to replicate our successful lay counsellor training programme, pioneered in Rwanda.

Our volunteers from the USA, a professional psychologist and a counsellor, have so far completed three programmes in Patongo. They equip local community members, including men, women, young people and full time carers and teachers, with the skills to offer comfort, help and support to people traumatised by the violence.

We are currently hoping to raise the funds to provide bicycles for our lay counsellors, allowing them to reach distant communities.