news from Sophie in Northern Uganda

Greetings from Patongo, in the north east corner of Uganda. Ninety degrees and rather sticky. However, no complaints from this end because the Network for Africa team is really seeing the results of our efforts. We started work here in 2008, and this week we are completing our fifth visit by our team of 2 wonderful volunteer psychologists. They have now trained over 300 local people, including elders community leaders, former child soldiers, and vulnerable young people, in basic trauma counselling skills allowing people to learn to cope with the widespread trauma they have experienced.

Our psychologists have also trained a smaller group of smart, motivated local community members to be volunteer outreach counsellors (VOCs). We have trained the VOCs to help survivors of the brutal war identify their trauma, understand it and then manage it.

Thanks to the Warham family in London, the VOCs have bikes so they can provide counselling to ten communities in outlying rural villages - and their fame has spread. Now we've had requests for the VOCs to offer psychosocial help to people living with HIV.

Twenty three years of a vicious and devastating war left huge scars on this remote area of Uganda - emotional, economic and social scars - but we are encouraged to see such immediate progress. We thinl the main reason for our success is that we asked local people what they thought their biggest challenges were, and what their priorities are. And we keep asking them.

Here is what our partners say is most important:

1) The need to get people farming efficiently, especially the returning abducted child soldiers who need to provide for themselves. That means we need agricultural tools and training.

2) Health care. There are very few drugs avalaible, and two nurses struggle to see 100 patients a day.

3) Family planning. Unfortunately there is stigma attached, and we are working with local groups to provide education to younger people and to distribute condoms to more obscure areas.

4) Counselling services and health kits for people living with HIV. The rate of HIV here is almost three times the Ugandan average because of systematic rape during the conflict. For about £35 or $56 per kit we want to be able to provide condoms, a blanket, medicated soap, a jerry can, etc, for the very poor people living with HIV.

More from me soon. The VOCs say thank you to all who have so generously helped Network for Africa's work in their community.

Sophie McCann.