Imagine: You hear men at the door one night. They drag your husband outside. As you watch through the window, they brutally kill him in cold blood. Then they move on to other houses.
Your nightmare has just begun. Leaving nearly everything but your baby behind, you flee in tears while you have the chance.
I know this is a brutal story. But it was the stark reality for Kasime, an adolescent mother from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who was forced to flee her home last year amid rising violence.
Five years ago, Kalista had no hope for any kind of future. She had fled South Sudan’s civil war with her six younger siblings to the relative safety of Imvepi Refugee Settlement in northern Uganda. She escaped the violence of war. But sadly, at Imvepi she exchanged the threat of violence for the heartbreak of sexual exploitation.
As we reported in January, the enhanced agriculture training program we initiated last year in response to a growing hunger crisis within Imvepi Refugee Settlement produced remarkable results. A total of 200 adolescent girls participated. One of those students is Caroline. At harvest, her crop yield was more than impressive: 440 pounds of sorghum, over 600 pounds of maize, and more. Selling excess crops allowed her to buy clothes and bedding for her children, renovate her small thatched house, and purchase goats. And she has stored enough cereal grain to last her family until mid-May.
In Imvepi Refugee Settlement in northern Uganda, Africa’s hunger crisis was compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as severe international food relief cutbacks. In response, we initiated a hybrid agriculture program designed to provide the youth we serve in Imvepi supplemental food relief, while also giving them the training, tools, and supplies they needed to grow their own food. Now we are thrilled to announce that the agriculture initiative has proved to be a resounding success – and your support made this possible!
If you had asked Carolyn Baldwin a few years ago whether she thought her sewing skills would someday help young women half a world away stay in school, she might have shrugged you off with a laugh. In fact, that’s more or less how she reacted when Krista Brown, ChildVoice Donor Relations and Outreach Coordinator, first approached her about volunteering to help make reusable menstrual pad kits for ChildVoice’s THRIVE Program.
As summer comes to an end, I know that many of you are preparing to get your kids ready to go back to school. But for Nigerian girls like Haija whose lives have been disrupted by violence and unimaginable loss, something as simple as going to school is a distant dream. Haija was just 12 years old when Boko Haram terrorists came to her village and abducted her. I want to share a small part of her harrowing story with you, in her own words.
Last week we announced the upcoming publication of Enduring the Night: Courageous Stories of Survival by Former Girl Soldiers. This book, compiled and edited by former ChildVoice interns, features the stories of several Lukome Centre graduates who were abducted as children by the Lord’s Resistance Army.
