Uganda
Network for Africa Counselling Training Programme in Patongo, northern Uganda.
Our volunteer counsellors Dr Barbara Bauer and Shelly Evans and Network for Africa staff, Sophie McCann and Louise Roland-Gosselin returned to Patongo for the third instalment of the trauma counselling training programme for two weeks in October – November 2009.
Network For Africa started working in Northern Uganda in April 2008. We have just completed our third trip, and this is an update on our progress.
In summary, the business and enterprise hubs we established are flourishing. We previously trained groups of women in basic business skills and they have taken to the market economy with great enthusiasm, resourcefulness and ability.
Among other profit-making projects, they have established a bead making company. A happy by-product of making money together is the formation of close-knit women’s support groups, offering solidarity and friendship to those who previously felt isolated.
Network for Africa’s team of 4 psychologists worked in a town in northern Uganda called Patongo.
Their aim was to train lay members of the community in basic counselling skills. Patongo has been described as the worst part of the worst district in the most neglected area of Uganda.
A devastating twenty-year war has only recently ended and an extremely fragile peace is now in place. Yet thousands are deeply traumatised by the massive scale of murder, rape and abduction. During the war over two million people were forced to leave their farmland to live in squalid camps.
April 2010 Newsletter