Project Trip: Watoto’s Work

Once the LRA left northern Uganda five years ago, Watoto, along with many other missionary organizations, stepped in and started to help the people of Gulu who were very much in need after twenty years of terror imposed by the government and the LRA.

Watoto is a very large organization and has been able to help the people of Gulu in many different ways. There are already several different ministries in place, including a children’s village. The village is a collection of homes that takes in children that have been orphaned. These children lose their parents for a variety of different of reasons. Some have been left without a family because of the LRA. Others lose their parents to HIV/AIDS. Yet others are taken in because their families abandoned them because they have nothing to provide for them. These children are put in to a home with a mother. Each home has around eight children with one house mom. These houses are put into clusters of eight homes for a total of 64 children in each cluster. The current village has 3 full clusters of homes with two more partially full.

Additionally, Watoto has a baby’s rescue home. The rescue home takes in children under the age of two that have been orphaned for many of the same reasons above. As soon as the babies are old enough, they transfer from the rescue home to the children’s village. They are put into a home and given a mother.

On top of taking in orphaned children, Watoto offers trauma counseling for those affected by the LRA. Over the past couple years, counselors have been traveling to IDP camp to IDP camp, offering trauma rehab for those still living in the camps. Thousands have flocked to the camps while the counselors are there to receive help. The rehab involves training people to deal with the pain they have experienced and helping them learn how to forgive those that have wronged them. Many have come to know the saving, forgiving work of Christ as a result of the trauma rehabilitation program.

The next project that Watoto is undertaking is an agricultural and technical college and training center for those left without any life skills. This is where eMi comes in. I will describe it more in detail in the next post.