Living Hope is part of the Watoto organisation and aims to restore dignity to vulnerable women in Uganda by:
-Improving their quality of life by assisting with basic necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, and medical care
-Providing comprehensive HIV/AIDS care including counseling and psychosocial support
-Spiritual discipling
-Empowering and equipping with vocational skills that will enable these women to become productive members of their community
-Setting women up with self sustainable income generating projects using micro-finance loans
The target group is HIV positive single women, returnees from abduction into the Lord’s Resistance Army and teenage mothers.
Pilot Laura Westley recently flew a group from Living Hope to Gulu, northern Uganda.
Laura writes, ‘Gulu: famous as a town that housed night-commuters during the civil war. Children would walk from their villages each night to sleep in shelters or the street. The alternative was being abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army, mutilated, murdered, raped and forced to carry a gun and use it as directed. So, it was with great enthusiasm that I flew Marilyn and her team of four up to Gulu for the day. Living Hope Gulu has 50 ladies learning tailoring.
'The morning was a ladies’ service. The singing, all in Acholi, was just fantastic and a joyful outpouring of praise. The ladies danced and danced as brightly coloured tattered rags became the garments of salvation and royal robes of righteousness that Isaiah writes of before my very eyes.
‘I met Nancy, shy and quiet, who didn’t really look you in the eye. She smiled and hugged Marilyn; Nancy has a new nose. Someone had sponsored a plastic surgery operation that gave her a new nose. Someone else has discipled her and led her to the Lord. Nancy is still praying for new lips and new ears because they, too, were hacked off. But there is now an inner healing that has commenced and Nancy is slowly healing from the inside out.’
MAF regularly flies to Gulu in support of organisations such as Living Hope who are bringing healing and restoration to vulnerable people.