Economic Growth Uganda Project #48609

Vocational Skills for Former Child Soldiers

by Terra Renaissance

Vocational Skills for Former Child Soldiers

Project Report | Oct 14, 2026
Former Child Soldiers Take Their First Steps Toward Reintegration

By Overseas Team | Overseas Team

Thanks to your support, a new chapter has opened for 65 former child soldiers in northern Uganda. They have completed the first three months of rehabilitation, and this month vocational and basic education training began.

Wounds that take time to heal
Many former child soldiers carry deep physical and psychological wounds from years of captivity. They witnessed atrocities or were forced to take part in combat. Some watched family members or friends killed before their eyes. Children abducted in northern Uganda were in some cases forced to live as soldiers for 20 to 30 years before finally returning home.

Three months of care, from the day they returned
Since the moment each person returned, we have provided intensive psychosocial support. Over the past three months, every beneficiary has received individual counselling, 9 group sessions, and 8 psychosocial workshops. For those with especially severe trauma, one-on-one sessions continue so that no one is left without support.

Our care is grounded in respect for each person’s values and cultural background and those of their families. Where survivors or families requested it, we also supported culturally rooted practices, including traditional reconciliation ceremonies, to help restore emotional stability.

When rehabilitation began, the young men and women were in a fragile state. Some had just returned to Uganda via the Central African Republic and South Sudan, and others had been born and raised in captivity. Their expressions were guarded, and the atmosphere was tense. Our first priority was simple: to create a space where they could finally relax and feel safe.

For three months, our staff cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner together with them every day. We arranged family visits and ensured they could access medical care immediately whenever someone fell ill. Staff stayed on-site around the clock to listen whenever someone needed to talk. Day by day, these small acts built trust.

The moment has arrived: training begins.
Last week, we began vocational and basic education training, a major milestone. After extensive consultations with the beneficiaries themselves, we expanded the options beyond tailoring, fashion design, carpentry, and handicrafts to include, for the first time, motorcycle repair.

Training has just begun, but participants are engaging with far more enthusiasm than we expected. Compared to the day they arrived, their expressions have brightened, and the tension has eased. We believe this is partly because their world has grown from the rehabilitation residence to the training facility, affectionately known as the “Smile House.”

At the training centre, they continue building the knowledge and skills essential for reintegration: vocational training, basic education, and peace education. Completing the first phase does not mean psychosocial needs disappear, so weekly group therapy and individual counselling continue in parallel.

What comes next
Of the 65 beneficiaries, 35 adults are moving into vocational and livelihood-focused training aimed at self-reliance. The other 30 are children born and raised in captivity. They will continue basic education and psychosocial support as we prepare them to enter formal schooling next year. For these children, “returning to school” will be their very first time in a classroom, so we are committed to giving them a solid foundation before that day arrives.

Thank you for walking with us
None of this would be possible without you. Your support has helped create a safe place where these young people can begin to imagine their own futures. We will keep sharing their progress, and we hope you will continue to walk alongside them.

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Oct 3, 2026
From Uganda, Former Child Soldiers Are Calling Their Comrades Home

By Overseas Team | Overseas Team

Thank you, as always, for standing with the young people of northern Uganda and with us. Your continued support makes everything in this report possible.

To protect the privacy and safety of the people we support, we edited the photos in this report so individuals cannot be identified.

A conflict that began in Uganda

Since the late 1980s, an armed group has abducted children in northern Uganda and forced them to fight. For many years, we worked with a painful dilemma: no matter how many children reclaimed their lives, new victims would keep appearing as long as the conflict continued.

Over time, though, the situation shifted. The armed group is now weaker than ever, and most of its fighters are former child soldiers who grew up inside it, along with their children. If they can be demobilized, the group will collapse from within. In 2023, we turned that idea into our 500 Returns Project.

Smile House graduates become rescuers.

The key to this effort is the young people who graduated from our "Smile House" in Gulu, northern Uganda. After rebuilding their own lives, they wanted to rescue the comrades they had left behind. Those still inside the group have been told that "if you go back, you will be killed," so calls to return from governments and NGOs rarely reach them. The only voices they trust are those of people who lived through the same experience.

So graduates record video messages, and Terra Renaissance delivers them:

"Now I'm receiving vocational training and walking a new path in life. Terra Renaissance welcomed me. You can come back too. Don't be afraid; please come home."
— from a video message calling on combatants to return

Progress so far: 54% of the way to 500

500 is the estimated number of former child soldiers whose demobilization would allow the armed group to be dismantled from within. As of July 2026, 272 people have returned through the project, including those still in the process of returning.

2023: 141
2024: 8
2025: 25
2026 (through July): 98

In March 2026, the Government of Uganda also joined the first intergovernmental conference on the safe return and reintegration of former child soldiers, convened at Terra Renaissance's call, and agreed to cooperate with our return support.

A message from the Overseas Operations Director (based in Uganda)

"Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support. We now have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to end one of Africa's longest-running conflicts peacefully, through the power of citizens. If we let up now, new forces could supply money and weapons, and the tragedy could reignite. We are determined to see this through this year and next.

But return is not the goal. Without support for social reintegration, they will be driven back into armed groups or crime. Because each person has different circumstances and moves at a different pace, we will walk beside them until the day they become self-reliant. Please continue to watch over them warmly to the very end and lend us your strength."

How your gift helps

In Uganda, each person who comes home needs a safe place to start again: psychosocial care, vocational training, and support until they can stand on their own. Your donation helps a young person rebuild their life at Smile House, and every graduate who rebuilds a life can become a voice that brings the next person home.

With gratitude,
Terra Renaissance

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Jun 4, 2026
Project Update - Graduate Follow-up & Pay-It-Forward

By Overseas Team | Member of Overseas Team

Names in this update are pseudonyms to protect each person's privacy.

Thank you for walking this long road toward peace alongside us. In this update, we'd like to share the stories of a few of the graduates we've been followin—thee people at the very heart of everything your support makes possible. They are quiet stories, but deeply hopeful ones.

Our follow-up work is simple but essential: we stay in touch with graduates after they finish their vocational training to see whether their new livelihoods are holding—and to witness something remarkable: the way one person's independence becomes a gift to the next generation.

This cohort includes not only former child soldiers but also young people born in captivity during the conflict (we call them CBCs—Children Born in Captivity). Many grew up in the shadow of war, and during the pandemic they faced new dangers, including pressure to join gangs. We welcomed them into our training program, and we are now following their first steps into independent life. Here are two of them.

Awor opened her own tailoring shop last October. Since then, she has done something we are especially proud of: rather than waiting for further support, she saved from her own earnings and bought additional sewing equipment herself, reinvesting in her future. Her livelihood is steady, and she is living independently. This is exactly the ownership our work hopes to nurture—not dependence on aid, but the confidence to build forward.

Okello's story reaches back across the years. He, too, is a young man born in captivity, and last October he opened his own carpentry shop. He has saved enough from his earnings to buy two cows—no small thing, when a single cow can cost several hundred dollars. But the most moving part is who his mother is. More than a decade ago, she was a young woman who had been abducted and held for years and who lived with a lasting injury from a landmine. With our reintegration support, she rebuilt her life and stood on her own. Back then, Okello was just a small child at our facility.

A mother supported him into independence; her son is now standing on his own feet, building a trade, and saving for the future. One generation's recovery passed on to the next—this is what "pay-it-forward" means in real life. And recently, a new baby was born into the family: a granddaughter for his mother, a niece for Okello. Time moves on, and so does hope.

Not every story is this steady yet—some young people still face real challenges, and we will keep walking with them, too.

It is modest progress. But it is the kind of progress that lasts. Thank you for making it possible and for staying in this with us.

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