I took a spontaneous picture of Alice Acol, a 7 yr old girl, who had become her family's caregiver when she lost her father and then her mother came down with a fatal debilitating disease. In the picture, Alice is struggling to balance her youngest sibiing on her back while stuffing new cotton harvest into her shreded dirty rag that she wore. I soon learnt that on most days Alice would be seen carrying a jag of water on her head from a protected well 1 mile away, collecting firewood and preparing family meals. Alice is among thousands of youth who were born in refugee camps in war-torn northern Uganda and have returned with their relatives to resettle in their ancestral villages. It was not by error that schooling is not listed among the chores of Alice's daily activities. Education, especially girl-child education is not a priority here in Opac Village located 230 miles away in Alebting District.. basic survival is. A generation of youth particularly girls is struggling to resettle in the unfamiliar terrain of village life in northern Uganda, and who have hardly known the love of a two-parent family home, nor been to a classroom where to learn to sign their names and add 1 to 2 = 3 chickens (did I get that right?). At Ochan Self-help Alliance we have developed a program to build small, environmentally friendly and affordable core houses for the most vulnerable households like Acol's and to increase their buying power through improved cash crop production. We think that in 3-4 years' time, such vulnarable families will have access to clean rain water built just around the corner and afford cheap labor that will free Alice from house care so that she begins to attend school on a regular basis, with a reading desk set aside for homework after school. You can also chip in to support our village motto of "kel kuc pacu" (bring peace home) in Opac village at our website www.ochanalliance.org/blog.

William Boto, Ph.D
President

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