Keren Pollock

Keren is a teacher at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School which has forged strong links with several schools and education projects in Uganda.  Keren will be taking a sabbatical from May to July 2019 and visiting some of these partner schools, including a project in the north of the country for the education and rehabilitation of former child
soldiers.

Nick Pollock 

Nick is an in-house lawyer working in central London and he will be accompanying Keren for the first 2 weeks of her time in Uganda.

Week 1 – Eastern Uganda

We will firstly be visiting Mbale, eastern Uganda, and working among internally displaced peoples in urban slums and rural villages  for one week.  

Green Pastures

Keren will be working at Green Pastures, a local secondary school, where many of its orphans are sponsored by Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School. Education is highly prized as the route out of poverty and yet only 15% of the population can afford to finish secondary school. Green pastures is very much a local school, with no electricity and few books and many learn by rote. Sponsorship pays teachers’ salaries, meals for the children, uniforms and such books as they have. Our financial support is vital to keep this school functioning. A Girls Dormitory is badly needed. We would love to be able to give a substantial gift to build this dormitory block.

Jenga

Jenga is the umbrella charity for a network of charitable activities in the area, including the Green Pastures school, a hospital and a church.  Nick will be working alongside a local pastor as a volunteer in whatever capacity required, potentially visiting homes, hospitals and prisons.

Weeks 2-4 – Northern Uganda

We will then be travelling to northern Uganda to work at the Third Hope Rehabilitation Centre for ex-child soldiers, which is based very close to the borders with South Sudan and The Democratic Republic of Congo. As many as 30,000 children were violently abducted from their village homes by the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony. The same children were forced to kill their parents and burn their homes so that they had nowhere to return to. They were marched off to bush camps, drugged and brutalised into training as child soldiers. 

Third Hope 

20 ex-soldiers are now being cared for by Third Hope.  The project leaders are Rose-Mary McIntyre and her husband David Salmon. Rose-Mary used to teach English at Haberdashers’ until her interest in using the creative arts in trauma therapy took her to Uganda where she was confronted with the horrors of children being used as slave fighters. She and David have dedicated their lives to finding a solution. Rose-Mary and David bought 35 acres of bush land in this war-torn area, built a village-style residential home and planted a self-sustaining farm so that those who managed to escape and return would have somewhere to live, to heal and to rebuild their lives. These are deeply traumatised young men and women who have experienced unimaginable pain and violence.

The centre has recently opened and 20 ex-child soldiers are currently taking part in the programme.  (They are now young adults, no longer children, but they need the education normally enjoyed by children, as well as trauma counselling). A further 60 ex-child soldiers now want to sign up to the rehabilitation programme.

It costs approximately £1000 per year to sponsor each person on the programme.  Rose-Mary and David spend 6 months of the year in Uganda and 6 months in the UK seeking to raise funds.  At present the funds are barely there to allow the 20 current students to continue so we are trying to raise funds to support these 20 and the prospective 60 new students.

Keren will spend 3 weeks at the centre and will be focusing on writing an educational programme for these young people, teaching English (the official language of Uganda) and visiting local schools.

Nick will spend one week at the centre, teaching a programme of reconciliation and forgiveness, and coaching students to help them to find employment or to start their own businesses.

Your participation

Please partner with us. All gifts will go directly to Third Hope.  Our costs, such as travel to Uganda and accommodation, will be borne 100% by us.

Please watch a short video from a Requiem written by David to honour the thousands of children lost in war. The words are of those of a child soldier. The video can be found at: http://thirdhope.org/events/  Click on the song: Will there be a home?

For further information the Third Hope website is http://thirdhope.org

The Jenga website is http://jengauganda.org/

Nick Pollock can be contacted at: njcpollock@hotmail.com

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