March 29, 2019 – On March 14 and 15, our Founder/CEO Forest Whitaker conducted a field visit at the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement with our partner, the Western Union Foundation, represented by Elizabeth Roscoe, Vice-President, and Executive Director and Ernesto Boada, a board member of the Foundation. The visit was an opportunity for the Western union foundation team to meet with beneficiaries and stakeholders of the program we jointly implement in and around the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement in Uganda. They exchanged directly with children, youth and women groups from our programs as well as with WPDI staff and local officials, including the respective offices of the Prime Minister of Uganda (OPM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). They obtained first-hand feedback on the transformative impact of the program reputed as one of the most effective in the Kiryandongo area.
The field visit mission was organized as part of the cooperation between WPDI and the Western Union Foundation to promote peace and sustainable development through youth empowerment among the refugee and host communities in Kiryandongo District. Our joint action there aims to benefit the 53,000 refugees residing in the settlement, most of them South Sudanese nationals displaced by the past and present conflicts in their country, as well as the communities located around the settlement. The main idea behind this program is that addressing the refugee crisis requires to develop long-term interventions that deliver lasting results. To achieve this, we entered a 3-year partnership with the Western Union Foundation, which, after three years of successful implementation, we are thrilled to announce, will be renewed for another three years.
The mission thus had a key role for assessing the ongoing activities and starting to reflect on how to improve a program that is now well established in the settlement. This was clear from the meetings that we had with the representatives of UNHCR and OPM, who confirmed to our leadership that, since their inception in 2017, our activities were having a very positive impact on the communities, to the extent that WPDI was recognized as the lead organization for peace-building in the settlement.
This impact follows in a large part from having a strong presence within the settlement through our Community Learning Center (CLC). CLCs are a cornerstone in our model, which is based on the assumption that knowledge, information, and communication are indispensable to peace and sustainable development. The 70,000 visits received in 2018 in Kiryandongo amply demonstrate the relevance of the CLC and its services including free access to connected computers, library services, certified courses in conflict resolution, ICT, arts and craft and business skills as well as sessions on sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and trauma healing. Through direct exchanges with trainees in our courses on ICT and Arts and Craft as well as an in-depth presentation of our SRH and trauma healing programs, the delegation got direct feedback on how the CLC positively impacts the lives of the communities within and around the Settlement.
Our impact in the camp is also a result of the activities carried by our youth peacemakers, who make a force for peace and development on the ground. To build this group, we first train the first cohort of highly talented and dedicated young women and men who we later support as they train another, larger, group of local youth with whom they develop educational projects and small businesses in the settlement. Their activities reached around 23,000 people in 2018 – a significant contribution to the welfare of their communities. “I want to commend you for making peace happen every day in and around the settlement,” said Forest Whitaker. Speaking in the name of his peers, one of the peacemakers told Forest Whitaker and his partners from WUF: “Thank you for giving us a capital!” The local youth as well insisted on the quality of the training they received from the youth leaders. Ernesto Boada responded in kind: “Your education is the one thing nobody can take from you.”
The delegation also exchanged with some of the 285 vulnerable refugee women supported as a group by WPDI and WUF, many of them single mothers and widows. We provided them with trauma healing, entrepreneurship courses and grants for the development of 19 businesses they now manage through strong groups of 15 women. Nancy, one of their representatives, thanked us for our support and in particular the trauma-healing program: “if you can see so many smiles in this room today, it is thanks to your trauma-healing program.” After this meeting, held at the CLC, our CEO and the WUF representatives visited two of the 19 businesses to learn how some of the beneficiaries had organized themselves to manage their enterprises collectively. One of the businesses was a tailor shop located in a market within the settlement, which had quickly become successful, thanks to the rigorous organization of its 15 owners and their capacity to learn from each other to improve their skills. The other business was a farming project, which also proved rapidly successful to the extent that the group expanded from 15 to 120 members and diversified its activities. One main lesson to be drawn from the businesses is on the relevance of offering aspiring entrepreneurs a combination of training, funding and backstopping, which gives them confidence and strengthen their capacity for resilience and innovation.
An important aspect of the mission was also to gain insights on activities that we undertake to disseminate a culture of peace and non-violence among children and youth in the Kiryandongo area. One of the channels for this is to teach peace and conflict resolution directly in schools to sensitize future citizens at an age when the most fundamental values that will guide our lives are shaped. This is a program that we conduct in two primary and two secondary schools for more than 350 pupils and students – 270 of whom also benefit from a scholarship program set up by Hikmet Ersek, the CEO of Western Union, when he visited the settlement in December 2017. At the Panyadoli Secondary School located within the Settlement, students expressed their gratitude for the program, in particular, girls who stressed that the grants had helped many of them remain in school. Commending the students’ commitment to peace and education, Elizabeth Roscoe said: “You have taken your education in your own hands; you have taken your future in your hands.”
The joint visit concluded on a lively scene of Forest Whitaker and Ernesto Boada kicking a ball to open the 3rd edition of the Peace Cup football tournament. This competition is organized by WPDI and gathers 60 teams – including 4 female teams – from the Settlement and around in celebration of peace and reconciliation. The event is a high point for one of our most successful program in the camp, Peace Through Sports. The program includes regular training sessions that combine sports practice with workshops on peace, trauma healing, etc. and games where our teams compete with others from Kiryandongo District. More than 10,000 community members have attended these competitions last year.
A summary of our action in Kiryandongo, Peace Through Sports has been hailed for generating psycho-social benefits while contributing to disseminate a culture of peace and non-violence within and around the refugee settlement. This overall success of WPDI and Western Union Foundation is something that the members of the delegation have been able to experience directly through their numerous exchanges with a wide array of stakeholders on the ground. This is the knowledge that will be put to good use as we enter a period of renewed partnership for the next three years.