Alice the Stationery winner from 'The Den'

Alice Akwero grew up in Kitgum, in the Acholi lands of northern Uganda

The oldest of 8 children she has 4 brothers and 3 sisters, all of whom are still alive, as are her parents.

To start with Alice’s childhood was fairly standard for a provincial Ugandan girl – she went to school each day, Helped with the chores when at home, looked after some of the younger siblings, and enjoyed being with her friends.

But then the Lords Resistance Army appeared on the scene and things changed completely. Teenagers were being abducted in the night and rebels would appear in the villages and towns, rounding up anyone who happened to be in the wrong place.

Alice’s family were fearful for their lives, and for three or four years they moved between Kitgum and Kampala, seeking safety.

This all happened when Alice was about 13 – 17 years, and in those years of turmoil, Alice fell in love with a lad of her age, and she got pregnant. Stephen was born, and Alice started moving back and forth with Stephen’s dad, rather than her own family.

When Stephen’s dad was abducted one night and hacked to death, Alice fled to Kampala vowing never to return north. She has lived in Acholi Quarters ever since, raising Stephen (now age 10), and her daughter Bella (age 3) whose dad is not around.

Alice earns money by selling bead products to a market trader, and also to teams from overseas when they visit. Thankfully she has managed to avoid working in the quarry too much, although she knows that is a fall-back option if she gets desperate for money. The money she earns is enough to pay the rent, and cover a meal a day for the family, and keep them clothed and shod – school fees are a bit too far, but thankfully Stephen is sponsored, so he is finally able to go to school.

Alice was the recent winner of a small ‘Dragon’s Den’ competition that was held within the Lubanga Ber cooperative of which she is a part. Her proposal was to open a stationers shop – something that doesn’t exist in the community already, and yet for which there is a great need.

She wants to sell the straightforward stationery bits and pieces that are needed for school, work etc; but also to have a photocopier and printer service – for those times when someone needs a copy of their ID, or of a letter, or many of the others occasions when people without email and internet want to keep a copy of something in the way that we would just do a scan and email option.

I met with Alice yesterday, one week on from her success in the Den, and already she has bought the photocopier, bought some stationery, and got her first copying job in the form of printing the service sheets for the local church. 

She hasn’t sorted the shop front yet, and still plans to do that. Indeed I think Alice had aimed to get the shop front in place before doing any business, but seeing how quickly she has got started on her dream, I don’t think that getting things in a different order is going to matter too much!

The meeting yesterday confirmed that the decision of the dragons last week in awarding her the winning pot was the right one - I’m looking forward to returning next visit and seeing how the business is going.

Connecting the professionals

This week has been all about connecting professionals, and having the joy of sitting back and watching the resultant peer to peer learning and skills development take place.

Liz and Elizabeth are both highly skilled professionals counselors / psychotherapists working with a range of clients in the UK, both privately and NHS-based.

ILA-Uganda are one of the CRED Partners, who specialize in trauma counseling and resettlement for the Acholi people, both in Kampala and up north in the Gulu region of Uganda. They also have a vision for developing a centre of best practice for a range of therapies related to mental wellbeing and overcoming trauma, and they are now starting to get invitations to get involved in delivering trauma counseling to refugee groups.

All marvelous people, doing incredible, self-less, life changing work for those that they serve, both here and in the UK.

And when put in the same room for 3 days you get a rich sharing of best practice, explanations of therapeutic models, cultural contextualizing of different ways of working, and a real focus on concern for self-care for each other. Powerful stuff that can only enhance the work of all practitioners present, and as a result enable more ordinary people who are struggling with a range of traumas to get the support they need to move onwards in climbing out of the mental pit of despair that they find themselves in.

Each day started with a wonderful time of praise and worship; they included times of deep thinking, times of sharing, times of questioning how to deal with particular problems, and times of laughter. Food and drink were shared, and games of pool at lunchtime were enjoyed!

These were 3 days where everyone came away richer for the experience; 3 days that will reap benefit for so many; 3 days that led to the development of strong professional bonds that will live on, even when everyone is back in their respective homes.

Thank you to Liz, Elizabeth and the ILA team – for all that you do, for all that you have each put in to the past few days, and for all that you bring to so many in your various working environments – the world is a richer place due to each one of you.

A day ‘in the field’ with ILA Uganda

I Live Again Uganda is an organization that I first came across in Acholi Quarters in Kampala, and is now one of the CRED Partners.

It specifically serves the Acholi people who suffered so much at the hands of the Lords Resistance Army between 1980’s and 2006, and does that both in Kampala, and also in the northern homelands of the tribe, in the area around the town of Gulu.

The work it does is predominantly trauma counseling, both relating to pain left over from the experiences of the insurgency, and more current issues (although many of them have their deep-seated roots in unresolved pain experienced at the hands of the LRA) and, where possible and when requested, resettlement of families from Kampala back to the north

This week, I am up in Gulu with two friends from church who are both professional counselors. Liz and Elizabeth are running 3 days of training to upskill the counseling team here, and so build their capacity to cope with the ever-increasing demand for their services.

We arrived in Gulu yesterday, and today, to help with understanding the local context of ILA’s work more, we went out to a village where the team have been doing 2 weeks of outreach, to meet with the local folks, and take part in the final session of their programme addressing issues relating to trauma, pain, letting go and moving on, community support, individual support, and faith-related questions.

What an absolute joy the day was!

ILA is very much a Christian-based organization, and the final session in the 2 week programme addresses the questions so often asked by those who suffered so much: ‘where was God in the suffering?’, ‘how can I believe in a God who let so much badness happen?’. Joel, the team member who heads up the community programmes, gave a fabulous talk, speaking from his own experiences and undergirding it with Bible references and prayer, and at the end a significant number of people raised their hands for prayer and to make a commitment to a new faith – praise the Lord for that!

A break for refreshment followed – sweet black tea and cassava, before the highly relished football match between an ILA side, and a team of locals. It was held on the local school field during the children’s lunch break, so the spectators were many, and the event was much enjoyed by all.

To enable sub-narratives of inclusion and gender equality, and to give everyone something to laugh about, Liz, Elizabeth and myself were asked to take part, albeit later in the game when the guys had run out of energy a bit! Obviously we couldn’t decline, so we donned our shirts, took to the pitch, and avoided the ball as much as possible, but without making our strategy too clear!! Happy to say that despite us, ILA won 1-0, but we still let the locals keep the ball at the end.

The rest of the afternoon included Liz and Elizabeth each doing a 1-1 counselling session with one of the locals, a time of testimonies to share about what impact the last two weeks have had, and then much hilarity during some team games.

The testimonies included reference to forgiveness, healing, new hope, letting go of past issues, improved relationships with family members, and a deepening of faith – very encouraging to hear, and confirmation of all the good that the ILA team are doing when they go out to the villages, and how much healing from past pain they are helping to initiate

The games that followed were much enjoyed by all – a balloon game whereby 10 older men and 10 older ladies raced against each other to ‘waddle’ with balloon between legs across to a chair where they then had to pop the balloon. The onlookers and participants were beside themselves with laughter, and it was so wonderful to see everyone having such a joy-filled time. There was an underlying message about the game, in that the balloon represented all their pain, and by popping it they were letting it all go, but by and large the main aspect was the huge community spirit being shown.

The other game involved married couples holding a piece of string between their mouths and working their way to the sweet suspended in the middle of the string. I was told that for many of the couples, especially the older ones, that would have been the first time for a long time that they actually looked each other in the eyes, and came close physically – another hilarious game with a deeper backdrop.

As a storm rumbled in the distance, the afternoon finished with a shared meal of beans, beef soup, rice and posho, before we bade our farewells.

It was a real privilege to be part of the events today, and I give thanks for all that ILA are doing to change lives and communities one by one for the better, and to help them move forwards from places of pain to hope for the future.  

Dragons Den in Acholi Quarters

Today was Dragon’s Den day for the Lubanga Ber group in Acholi Quarters, and considering that it was the first time we have held the event there, and also that none of the participants have the slightest idea what the concept of Dragons Den is, it really did go pretty well!

I’ve been involved in two Dragon’s Den events in rural Mityana now, each of them run in conjunction with the Missing Link Microfinance programme that John Njendahayo has set up. They’ve both been very successful and have sparked a rise in innovative and well thought through ideas for income generating activities amongst the programme members.

The members of Lubanga Ber are also keen to start some new little businesses, to help boost their funds, but until now the ideas have tended to be replicas of businesses that they see around them, rather than anything new, or innovative.  So the hope was that by running the Dragon’s Den event with them, it would encourage some of that entrepreneurial spark to be fanned into life amongst them.

The criteria for their ideas were threefold – not harmful to the environment, beneficial to the community, and new (or at least showing a different approach to an existing business that would give it some clear added value).

Last week, John and myself had the task of sifting through the 20+ ideas that had been put forward, and shortlisting it down to 6 finalists. Some of that shortlisting was fairly easy – eg the 5 applicants all wanting to run a grocery shop - but getting rid of the final one or two harder.

However, we did it, and today the 6 shortlisted applicants had their opportunity to stand before ‘the dragons’ (aka me, Liz, Elizabeth, Simon and John) and pitch for the winning pot. That in itself is no mean feat  - and to see them each taking on that task, and speaking in public, is testimony to how far this group have come with regard to feelings of empowerment and self-belief.

We heard from Alice (stationery business), Florence (egg-selling, which morphed into a general store), Apio (poultry farming), John (carpentry), Matilda (tailoring) and Harriet (mushroom growing).

All very good ideas, and all had their pros and cons, which fed into the deliberations. But a decision was reached, and I had the joy of declaring the winner of the Acholi Quarters Dragon’s Den 2018 to be ………drum roll……………… Alice Akwero and her stationery business !!!! JJJ

The size of the pot and the amount she was asking for didn’t quite match, so Alice needs to rethink a bit and adjust her budget accordingly, but we all felt that her business idea was the one that most fulfilled the criteria, and has potential to succeed.

So, congratulations to Alice and good luck as she embarks on her new business, well done to all the short-listed participants for their presentations today, and a big thank you to those who donated towards ‘the pot’.

And I look forward to connecting with Alice over the next few months as she gets started, to see how she is getting on.