Launching ‘Vita Plenae Uganda’

 

Over the past couple of days I’ve had the joy and privilege of delivering 360Life training to a group of teachers, church leaders, community leaders, youth leaders etc who are all based in and around the Soroti region of Uganda.

One of the key outcomes was the launch of Vita Plenae Uganda, a Ugandan-registered organization that has been set up to deliver trauma healing and mental-health training inspired by and based on the 360Life training programme. How wonderful – to know that the VPU folks believe in 360Life so much that they want to find a way to get it out across the nation through a locally-registered vehicle.

The vision of VPU is to see ‘lives transformed through healing, identity and wholeness across Uganda’. Their mission statement is ‘to educate, equip and empower individuals and communities to discover their God-given identity and fullness of life (uzima) through trauma-informed healing, compassionate service, and holistic wellbeing’. NB uzima is Swahili for wholeness.

The main trio who are heading up VPU are Sylvia, Pastor Steve, and Augusten, and after the training we sat together and discussed the next steps for the organisation, as well as the bigger dreams, and the various steps to be taken towards those dreams. These plans include working with NGO staff serving vulnerable populations, church and community leaders, teachers and school counsellors, prisoners and prison officers, refugees and host communities, and survivors of gender-based violence. Big dreams and big plans, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and as they shared their ideas with the other participants at the training, there was a real buzz of excitement and buy-in from all.

360Life programme initially emerged from conversations with various folks in Uganda, and then Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia and beyond. But the first conversations were in Uganda, and so it felt very appropriate that the first ‘expansion’ of 360Life has also been in Uganda. My prayer is that we will also have iterations of 360Life in other countries, as other folks trained in the programme follow similar paths to the VPU team.

But for now, I’m grateful to Steve, Sylvia and Augusten for taking these first steps, and I pray that the journey ahead for them will bring healing and wholeness to many – individuals and communities alike – across the nation of Uganda.