Kitgum sports equipment
Key Facts:
Project Name: Sports equipment for outreach/fun events
Programme: Enable
Partner organisation: Youth Department - Church of Uganda, Kitgum Diocese
Location: Kitgum, Northern Uganda
Key contact: Samuel Ongwech, Youth Minister
Support provided: Sports equipment (including footballs, netballs, sports kit and goal posts) and associated costs of travel and organisation to host sports events for children from the refugee camps and towns of war-torn northern Uganda.
Project since: February 2007 - present
Summary:
The northern Ugandan town of Kitgum is still a deeply affected place – despite recent ceasefires and peace talks, it remains at the centre of the insurgency war, and is full of desperately poor people who lived two decades in refugee camps. JMT has been working with the local church to help provide some outlet for the kids and opportunities for the church to show its concern and message of hope – organising sports tournaments for the children. JMT has helped provide the kit and equipment and the costs of organising. It doesn’t cost a great deal, and has had a huge impact on the morale of the people.
Youth with sports equipment donated by JMT
Detail and background:
Kitgum is in the north of Uganda, close to the Sudanese border and in the heart of the Acholi people’s tribal land. It is has been heavily hit by the 20-year insurgency war by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a guerrilla army which claims to want to rule Uganda by Ten Commandments but practises atrocities and relies on kidnapped child soldiers. The people of Kitgum have been badly afflicted, unable to visit the fields or their villages, many have lived in Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps on the edges of town for years; many of the children have lived their whole lives there. They live in cramped conditions, with no work, often little sanitation and rely on aid agencies for food handouts. They have lived in permanent fear of attacks by the LRA and of raids to kidnap children, whom are turned into child soldiers or sex slaves, and forced to commit terrible atrocities.
As a result, many of the children have for years walked each night into the towns to sleep in barbed-wire compounds, protected by the army; they are the ‘night commuters’.
More recently, there have been a series of cease-fires, and in 2006 a set of peace talks began, hosted in Juba, Sudan. Whilst they collapsed, there has been relative peace around Kitgum and lives have begun to slowly return to ‘normal’ as night shelters have been stopped and camps dismantled. However, many of the people and children have lost the skills of farming or work, and have been dragged into lives of alcohol and drugs.
The local Church has worked tirelessly over the years to protect and care for children – hosting night shelters and providing education and help (see JMT’s other projects in Kitgum on Orphan education and school books).
JMT has supported the church in looking for ways to care and support the children, bringing fun, structure and constructive activity to their lives and getting them away from the streets. This year, JMT has been working with the Youth Minister for the local Diocese, Samuel Ongwech to support an initiative to hold sports tournaments between camps and villages; JMT has supplied the sports equipment and kit, as well as the costs of organising and transporting teams to enable the competition to occur. The children and people of Kitgum are amazingly grateful; it has also given the Church the chance to show its care and concern and to build relationships with the kids.
Latest updates:
Nick Marsh visited Kitgum for the second time last year, along with Laura Burton, Tim and Sue Watson and Gary Ions. It is a tough place to visit, with army blockades, curfews and the threat of attack. Little works in the town – electricity, water and basic amenities are hard to find. However, the people are inspirational and on returning they received a wonderful welcome back! Time spent with friends and their families, and at the shelters and the camps playing with kids is emotionally exhausting and challenging, but immensely rewarding.
Links and info:
Read about the troubles in northern Uganda in articles such as on the BBC website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3514473.stm
Ways to get involved:
Financial support:
JMT provided ~£500 this year to provide all the required sports equipment, including balls (football, netball etc), team strips, referee outfits, goal posts and netball posts, as well as the costs associated with organising the tournament over several months between different camps and villages. Any donations towards these costs will help to provide costs of equipment and organisation.
Prayer:
• Please pray that the equipment and money is used wisely, and enables tournaments and events to occur in the future through careful use and care of the equipment
• Pray that the children would be able to enjoy the sports and it would be a constructive outlet for them from the hardships of daily life and their situations
• Pray that the opportunities would be there to teach of the Gospel
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