At first meeting Lilian’s wide, dark eyes betray a wariness, perhaps even a (well deserved) suspicion. With three other teenage girls she is sitting on the floor threading beads into brightly coloured sheets that will be transformed into brightly coloured bags and bangles.
The three teenagers are amongst thirty other South Sudanese teenage boys and girls who form the leadership of the World Vision trained Peace Clubs. They represent young people from across the five villages that form one of the refugee settlements in West Nile, Uganda. As the teenagers come together to talk to the visitors about their lives and activities I watch a wonderful (and yet not completely unexpected) metamorphosis occur. I’ve seen this happen before, in other places, and here again, and before my eyes, Lilian is transformed from a shy, suspicious child into a passionate, articulate and energised young woman.
Like many other children, Lilian has made the long and dangerous journey from her home across the border in South Sudan to Uganda, and like too many others she has done it unaccompanied by parents. With her father killed in the conflict and her mother unable to flee – Lilian joined with neighbours to bring her two younger siblings to safety.
When Lilian was approached by World Vision and heard about the Peace Clubs she jumped at the chance to be involved. With seven other teenagers she attended a three-day workshop on Empowering Children as Peace Builders (ECPB) which teaches young people about how to be advocates of peace in their own social and community structures. Following the training each teenager was challenged to go back to their village and recruit and train thirty other teenagers and to form them into Peace Clubs that designed and promoted their own peace initiatives.
And so today across the settlement teenagers meet to play football, to debate, to dance and to present dramas. Lilian tells us that, “We organize football matches between different zones in the camp and before playing starts, we tell the spectators that the aim of the match is to promote peace and no fights are allowed on the pitch”.
These young people tell us that they want to promote peace and build trust between young people of all tribes so that when they go home the same thing doesn’t happen again. "Back home in South Sudan", Lilian says "there are so many [about 64] different tribes – tribalism is the problem. Here in Uganda we don’t want tribalism, we don’t want fighting because of tribe."
She adds that they frequently stage community based plays whose main theme is peace. “We engage the community members during interlude and show them why peace is important to us. But also, we engage in community work as members of the peace clubs and we help the elderly and disabled. For example, when you help a person from a different tribe, it leaves a different impression about your personality and in the end we create smiles on people’s faces.”
