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"PinterestFacebook&amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s important for the young people they help to know they&amp;#39;re not alone&amp;#8212;and can have hope.&amp;quot; &amp;#8212;Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director, UNICEF\nBy Michelle Goldberg\nJennifer Achora was getting ready for school when the rebels seized her from her northern Ugandan village. Only 12 years old, she was forced to march, barefoot, to a military base in Sudan, carrying camp supplies on her head and threatened with death if she cried. Just a child, she was nonetheless given as a &amp;quot;wife&amp;quot; to a much older soldier and beaten unconscious when she tried to refuse sex. Eventually she bore a son whom she had to name Kony, after Joseph Kony, the murderous leader of her captors, the Lord&amp;#39;s Resistance Army (LRA).\nAround the world, unbelievably, children are kidnapped into this kind of slavery all the time; Amnesty International estimates that rebel militias and national governments are currently using about 300,000 children as soldiers. Over two decades Kony&amp;#39;s militia alone has stolen tens of thousands of children&amp;#8212;nearly a third of them female. The acts of war they are forced to commit is the stuff of horror movies: hacking off limbs, attacking their own villages, even murdering their own families. (The idea, say experts, is to make child soldiers feel alienated from their families&amp;#8212;and less likely to escape.) As a result, even if they are able to flee, former abductees are often ostracized by those who once loved them because of their awful deeds. Girls may bear the double burden of coming home with children fathered by the enemy.\nIn most cases, the villages they knew no longer exist&amp;#8212;war has driven about 85 percent of northern Uganda&amp;#39;s population into crowded, security-protected camps. On their own in these desperately poor places, where food is scarce and disease rampant, Uganda&amp;#39;s ex-child soldiers are some of the most vulnerable, traumatized people in the world.\nBands of children in filthy clothes, many with distended bellies, tramp around the camps&amp;#39; dusty lanes. Often an unkempt adult, driven mad by war, will stagger by, ranting, whiskey on his breath. The beauty of the emerald green landscape barely mutes the despair. Indeed, the place would seem hopeless&amp;#8212;if not for the presence of Empowering Hands, a support group for escaped or freed child soldiers, led by Achora and other female former captives.\nBy the time Achora escaped, after seven years, her parents had been killed and her old neighbors didn&amp;#39;t trust her. Memories of the murders she&amp;#39;d seen haunted her, especially when she was alone. Unbearably isolated, she considered rejoining the LRA.\nThen came the meeting that saved her life&amp;#8212;and so many others&amp;#39;. An American researcher named Jessica Lenz assembled a group of female former child soldiers to learn about their needs. Achora went. So did three other women she&amp;#39;d known in captivity: Milly Auma, Nighty Acheng and Sarah Ayero. The four banded together, and in 2004, with Lenz&amp;#39;s guidance, became Empowering Hands, now a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that supports released abductees as they transition to freedom. Through the group, these former victims have gained purpose, hope and pride&amp;#8212;and have helped at least 1,000 emotionally and physically scarred people recover.\nToday Empowering Hands is made up of more than 30 women, all younger than 30. With small grants from UNICEF and Quaker Peace and Social Witness, they give out small business loans, counsel unstable former abductees to help them rejoin their communities and&amp;#8212;if they can find scholarship funds&amp;#8212;re-enroll in school. With peace talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government under way, more than a thousand children may flood the camps soon, making the group&amp;#39;s work even more vital.\nAsk any of the founders their dreams for the future, and their immediate response is that they want to expand Empowering Hands. Their dedication is palpable. Ayero says the group is like a mother and a father to her. When Achora had a daughter, she named her Jessica, after Lenz.\nBut before they could work together, the women had to forgive each other, and themselves. The Empowering Hands mission starts inside their little office, and Auma&amp;#39;s story is the perfect example. While the group&amp;#39;s noble, bullet-scarred 27-year-old chairperson was held captive, she was given as a second wife to a commander. Auma says his first wife, Lucy, abused her and denied her food. Years later, the two women met again in freedom, and Auma learned Lucy&amp;#39;s story. She, too, had been abused mercilessly. Today Lucy is the group&amp;#39;s vice-chairperson, and the two women are close friends.\nTo outsiders, the women of Empowering Hands seem shy and reserved, but working together, they radiate confidence. Withdrawn, suspicious young people open up to them, seeking help with everything from medical care to thoughts of suicide.\nThe women are even bringing families back together. When Florence Apio, now 20, returned from the LRA with a child in tow and another on the way, her own mother refused to give her food or water and chased her from their small mud hut. &amp;quot;I was scared to death of her,&amp;quot; her mother says. &amp;quot;My fear was that she would kill me.&amp;quot; This may have been rational: Apio, having grown up as a soldier, says she felt like killing anyone who angered her. A delegation from Empowering Hands counseled Apio to help her deal with her explosive emotions, and convinced her mother to accept her daughter. Now, her mother says, &amp;quot;we live in harmony.&amp;quot; A universe of pain still churns behind Apio&amp;#39;s dulled eyes&amp;#8212;there is no easy deliverance here, only tiny steps in that direction.\nSometimes, though, redemption is more profound. Maurine Akello was just 16 (and six months pregnant) when she fled the LRA during a firefight between the rebels and the Ugandan army. Kidnapped nearly a year earlier, she&amp;#39;d been forced to abduct a neighbor, and her village never forgave her. She found the stigma so painful that, like Achora, she considered rejoining her captors. Thankfully Akello discovered Empowering Hands first. She threw herself into their activities, and with the small stipends the women get for their work in the camps, she saved enough money to return to school. Smart and determined, she soon learned to speak fluent English. Today, at 18 years old, she&amp;#39;s Empowering Hands&amp;#39; secretary and de facto spokesperson. She&amp;#39;s so joyful and charismatic that it&amp;#39;s hard to believe she was once afraid to speak. Surrounded by her colleagues, many holding squalling babies, she breaks into a radiant smile. &amp;quot;Now I&amp;#39;m free,&amp;quot; she says."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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