Gulu visit
For two decades the Lord's Resistance Army has been recruiting its troops from the children of Northern Uganda.
Children as young as six are pressed into combat, and are often forced to kill a family member - sometimes their own parents - to prove their loyalty.
If they disobey an order they are routinely tortured, maimed and killed.
Tens of thousands of children have been treated in this fashion.
Most have died.
In a country where over half the population is under the age of fourteen, this has had an unimaginable impact.
Today, convoys of children - thousands of them - leave their homes every single night and walk to the only town of substance in the region, Gulu, and sleep in schools, hospitals and warehouses.
There, they have less chance of abduction.
In Gulu itself one centre, GUSCO, has opened to take care of escapee soldiers.
Managed by only six staff, and housing the children in tents in a mud-floored compound, they work heroically to reintroduce some semblance of normality into the lives of their charges.
Most staff and children are ill, most are traumatized, all are exhausted.
GUSCO - Gulu save the children organization - survives on funding from UNICEF, but this is not nearly enough for it to do its job satisfactorily.
What we plan to do is to help by sending out a team of people, experts in their field, to share skills, to educate the staff, and to put together a comprehensive report to present to UNICEF, Save the Children and to funding bodies, the aim of which will be to advocate a lengthy residency designed to improve conditions in the centre tenfold.
Our team will visit Gulu for a week to prepare this report.
Within the team are a therapist, an educationalist, a medic and an engineer.
The report will be co-authored by all of them.
To send them out we need to raise £5000.