The Voice Project Uses Music to Bring Peace to Northern Uganda

The non-profit group The Voice Project is working to bring peace to Northern Uganda through the music of well-known musicians around the world.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on July 27 2010

For more than 20 years, war has raged in Northern Uganda and the surrounding regions of Southern Sudan and Eastern Congo. Families have broken apart; more than 30,000 children have been abducted and forced to fight in Joseph Kony’s brutal guerilla fighting group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Many of these children, under the direction of the LRA, have performed acts of shocking brutality, even killing members of their own families.

Some of those children have managed to slip away from the rebel army—but, full of shame about everything they’ve done, they are afraid to return home.

But the women of Northern Uganda who’ve been left behind—mothers, widows, rape survivors, and former abductees—are reaching out to these former soldiers, urging them to come back home. They send their messages through music, in songs of peace and reconciliation that are spread from one person to another, reaching new villages and carrying into the bushland where the refugees are hiding.

The CAPTIVES ARE WELCOME HOME Song from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

This song is translated as, “The Captives Are Welcome Home Song.” This is the English version of the lyrics:

Kony we are waiting for you to release our children
so that they can come back home

the love we have for them is so great
we want them to come back home

our love for them is so great,
greater than yours Kony

Staying in the bush is so hard,
we need them to come home

The women’s strategy is working: former LRA fighters are coming home, and being embraced by their communities. And now, their mission has gone global.

A new non-profit group, The Voice Project, is working to bring peace and reconciliation to the region through the music of well-known artists. The organization has created a “cover chain” of musicians covering one another’s songs to raise awareness of their site, where they collect donations, sponsors, and advertisements to fund projects in Northern Uganda. Some of the artists participating in the musical chain include Andrew Bird, Peter Gabriel, and Billy Bragg. Check out the wonderful collection at The Voice Project’s website.

Money raised through The Voice Project will go towards job training, entrepreneurship, and child soldier rehabilitation training programs. With help from musicians—and listeners—all over the world, this troubled region may finally find peace.

Filed under: Arts and Culture, Non-Profits,

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