It is difficult to fix the whole world at once. However, small, community-minded projects, like Gulu GO, are achievable and can make a difference in the lives of people around the world. A small group of volunteers from the United States set out to do just this.
What started as a basketball camp has evolved into a program for leadership and empowerment of women. There are countless individual stories of resilience that a group of young women and girls in Gulu demonstrate despite growing up during a war that brought atrocities most in the world have difficulty imagining. Many have seen their mothers, sisters, aunts raped; their brothers or fathers murdered or forced to be a child solder; their young friends become child mothers. They are symbols of hope and glowing examples of the human spirit's ability to overcome adversity against all odds.
| What: | One week leadership/basketball camp |
| Who: | Girls ages 8-21 and volunteers from both the US and Uganda |
| Where: | Gulu, Uganda. Population 150,000. |
| Why: | Northern Uganda is coming out of a decades-long civil war with the LRA in which millions of men, women and children were forced from their homes to live in IDP camps for fear of rape or murder. The irony is the army-run IDP camps became their own source of terror, poverty, and crime. Since the cease fire in 2006, the area has been slowly getting back on its feet with millions leaving the IDP camps and settling back in their respective towns. Gulu, the "capital" of Northern Uganda, is the populous center for commerce and education. |
Basketball is the tool we use, but it's leadership skills and empowerment that we're after. After a camper has gone through our camp, we want them to be better daughters, sisters, and future mothers in their communities.
Goals
- Empower a segment of the youngest and largest population presently in northern Uganda through sports.
- Teach young girls the fundamentals of basketball.
- Use sports as a tool for self development and success in other areas of life.
- Teach skills to achieve in school and self potential.
- To bring together young girls from different primary and secondary schools to learn basketball fundamentals, make new friends, and discover new interests.
Camp Reports
Read about the success of our past Gulu GO Camps:
