Official opening of SOS Children's Village Gulu in Uganda

17/05/2009 -Helmut Kutin, President of SOS Children's Villages, will join President Yoweri Museveni to open the third SOS Children's Village in Uganda.

The SOS Children's Village in Gulu in northern Uganda started off as an emergency relief programme. Gulu is infamous because for years thousands of children have been travelling into town at dawn each day in order to avoid the dreadful night attacks of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which has been terrorising the civilian population in its fight against the government. In their violent criminal campaigns, the rebels have been targeting children and forcing them to become fighters, sex slaves and "wives".

At home in the SOS Children's Village in Gulu - Photo: Hilary Atkins

In 2002 SOS Children's Villages set up an emergency relief camp for children and young people who escaped from the LRA or were born in captivity and were abandoned. The emergency relief camp was gradually converted into an established SOS Children's Village. Over the past two years there has been a clear improvement after a war that lasted for decades and the children no longer have to march into town each day. The construction work on the SOS Children's Village is now complete and an SOS Social and Medical Centre are also open and already supporting many people.

The official opening in Gulu will be more than a symbolic event given the relatively peaceful situation and the strong hope for peace of the people in northern Uganda.

On 19 May President Kutin will also lay the cornerstone of another SOS Children's Village in Fort Portal, in the west of Uganda. The two other existing SOS Children's Villages in Uganda are in Kakiri and Entebbe.