Youth Leaders for Restoration and Development
We funded Youth Leaders for Restoration and Development (YOLRED) apprenticeship program for Providing Economic Empowerment for Children Born of War. YOLRED is an organisation that supports former child soldiers, child mothers, persons with disabilities, and other war-affected communities to obtain a better future through skills development, capacity building, and training to access information on fair justice, agriculture, land rights, and livelihood opportunities. This pilot apprenticeship project created opportunities for socio economic empowerment, professional development and livelihood training to a child born of war. The programme has been instrumental in being able to empower the apprentice to provide for her own basic social amenities and counter the discrimination and stereotypes held against children born of war. The apprentice was able to learn skills in reporting, administration, writing, Microsoft Office, professionalism and communication, and she was able to gain a certificate in record management. Check out their work here.
Global Welfare Association Cameroon
We supported Global Welfare Association Cameroon (GLOWA) in a project to promote and protect the rights of children born or war, in the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon. Specifically, with our funding, GLOWA was first able to identify 20 committed community actors to serve Project Animators. These were people who had been affected by conflict related sexual violence (CRSV) and were motivated to fight against it. They were trained on the phenomenon of children born of war and the crime of CRSV, with particular emphasis on concepts of consent and the vulnerability of women and girls in situations of armed conflict. The team then developed tools for the identification of all children born of war and for selecting those without birth certificates. Project Animators were then able to return to their respective communities and collect data on 314 children; including the father, the status of the mother and/or care giver, whether the child was registered and finally to determine the vulnerability of the child and caregiver. With this funding, GLOWA were also able to deliver community education and awareness campaigns and some of the most vulnerable mothers of the CBOW were supported with livelihood activities, such as sewing, administration and dry cleaning services. Finally, the funding from the CBOW Project has enabled GLOWA to engage in further projects and partnerships, with one of their most important upcoming tasks being to establish birth certificates to already-identified CBOW and those in the future. Read all about GLOWA here.
War Love Child
We supported Dutch organisation ‘Oorlogsliefdekind’ (War Love Child) to optimise content and functionality of their website to ensure long-term preservation and access. This included adequate archiving of older posts, back-end maintenance, financing website hosting and modernisation. War Love Child is an organisation that collects and documents stories of Dutch soldiers who fathered children born to Indonesian mothers during their service in the Dutch-Indonesian war of decolonisation between 1946-1949. This includes stories of their own experiences as well as the stories of their Dutch-Indonesian (secret) children and their Dutch half-brothers and -sisters.
Check out their new and improved website here.
Grassroots Reconciliation Group
We funded Grassroots Reconciliation Group (GRG) to support children born of war and aged between 14 years to 17 years. These are children who were born during the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) conflict in northern Uganda that lasted over 25 years and left devastating impacts in the community including both social and economic problems. The funding was used by GRG to identify children in need and then train 20 peer counsellors to deliver 5 trauma recovery sessions to 104 children across 4 different communities. These children attested to an improvement in their psychological wellbeing as well as an ability to deal with daily stressors of life because of the new skills learnt (including emotional awareness, gratitude and how to build hope). Children were also given the opportunity to join community theatre activities which enabled the children to showcase their talents in singing and dancing. Finally, GRG was able to deliver anti-stigma trainings to 200 people in local communities, with the aim of sensitising and advocating for inclusivity of children born of war. Check out their amazing work here.