PRojects directory

ACET ORPHAN AFFAIRS COUNCILS

Strategic Focus: Economic Empowerment, Child Rights
Where: Uganda

ACET Kitgum

Civil war in northern Uganda for over 20 years has created a sense of despair for many young people.
HOPEHIV has worked in the refugee camps with partner AIDS Care and Education Trust (ACET) since 2000, creating initiatives that help young people to be empowered and to become agents of positive change. Orphans Affair Councils (OACs) are one of the main ways vulnerable young people develop a voice and participate in community decision making. In the last few years, as the camps are gradually being disbanded, we have been helping these orphaned young people return safely to deserted communities and learn critical job skills. In 2011 many of these successful programmes are being replicated in two new districts – Gulu and Pader.

For more information on this project please download this [ document ]

[ Back to Categories ]

We see hope in Cosma.

Cosma is 23. When he was 19, he was living in Kampala, Uganda and because he hadn’t finished school, was only able to get casual jobs. His pastor told him about Net2Work, an IT skills course run by HOPEHIV partner Oasis. After he finished the course, he and a fellow graduate opened an e-academy at their church. Oasis spotted his potential and asked him to be a trainer for the new Net2Work course for former child soldiers in Gulu, in the war-torn north of the country.

Cosma told us, ‘This work in Gulu has given me joy and hope. I was initially fearful of coming to Gulu as I had heard all these stories of the atrocities. When I arrived the students seemed rude but I saw they were just traumatized young people who needed me to build a relationship with them.’ Cosma uses part of his salary to pay his younger brother’s school fees. In 2008 one of his 150 Gulu graduates became a teacher at the newly opened Net2Work academy for former child soldiers in Pader.

Find out more about Net2Work.