What We Do

Our Mission

Our mission is to facilitate the transition process to help LRA ex-combatants and their war-affected communities to rebuild their lives and improve their socio-economic status through holistic, culturally appropriate and locally designed projects.

Make an Impact

When child soldiers come home, they face tremendous stigma and trauma. Our programs are designed to transform that situation. At GRG, we use a holistic, bottom-up approach to the community reintegration of ex-combatants. We have worked with groups of 30-70 people composed of half ex-combatants and half of other community members. So far, we have worked with over 2,500 participants, supporting groups to examine their own problems and to come up with their own solutions.

We have five main types of projects:

  1. Livelihoods
  2. Trauma support
  3. Community microfinance
  4. Reconciliation
  5. Cultural activities

Each group designs its own projects. The group first develops its own multi-year development plan, which may include a range of different types of projects  to support the individuals’ and groups’ development. Our three objectives throughout these interventions are:

  1. To promote the reconciliation and psycho-social healing between ex-combatants and their war-affected communities;
  2. To facilitate the economic recovery of ex-combatants and post-conflict communities through support to needs-based, community-driven livelihoods projects; and
  3. To support ex-combatants and other community members to overcome the trauma of war and to become role models and leaders.
Group members identifying and ranking the problems they face in their community.

We work in phases of 4 to 5 years graduating groups at the end of each cycle allowing for a sustainable approach.  We aim at empowering beneficiaries through trust-building and commitment to the projects while we observe the patterns of social interaction over the time. Graduating means the beneficiaries are ready to move on, on their own, having acquired the tools, knowledge and resources to become independent and self-reliant.

Phase 1
1000 people graduated in 2011

Phase 2
1500 people graduated in 2016

Phase 3
In progress