My first encounter with Rwanda, back in 2004, would change my life, and it was thanks to the Survivors Fund, known as SURF. When I met the founder, Mary Kayitesi Blewitt, I knew I had found a charity with a clear-sighted, no-frills vision: helping the survivors of the 1994 Rwanda genocide rebuild their lives. There […]

Today, on International Women’s Day, we salute African women who have overcome the challenges they faced growing up, and continue to face. Despite this, or maybe because of it, they play a crucial role in lending a helping hand to people in need. Some of those inspiring women work at Network for Africa’s projects. Florence, Counsellor, Port […]

Something remarkable has been happening at our counselling sessions in Uganda: people who attend are spontaneously forming their own self-help groups. When they meet at our sessions, they find they have much in common, and they are creating a whole new network of people who support each other, sharing experiences and discussing future plans. Aid […]

“There is something underneath” is a comment heard too often in Sierra Leone, when people encounter someone with epilepsy or mental health issues or an Ebola survivor. What they mean is that there must be a demon or witch causing the affliction; a curse rather than a medical condition. Not that the rest of the […]

Most people reading this will be glad to consign 2020 to the “deleted items” box, or, for those of you who now live by Zoom, to push the “leave meeting” icon on this year. But there has been one silver lining: a heightened appreciation of the problems caused by depression, stress and trauma. People across […]

Ever since the novels Vanity Fair (1847) and Jane Eyre (1848), the orphan has been a standard fixture in literature. From Oliver Twist to Harry Potter, via Tom Sawyer and David Copperfield, readers have followed the difficult lives of vulnerable young people as they are forced to make their way in the world. Over the […]

Covid-19 is a new experience for most of us, but for Sierra Leone, it is a recurring nightmare. First, the small West African nation endured a long, vicious, devastating civil war, in which rebels amputated people’s hands as punishment. Then in 2014 came Ebola. Now, it is Covid-19. It’s hard to get a clear picture […]

These are challenging times, right across the globe. A suicide help-line in southern California reports that in March it had 21 phone calls, while in April, after a few weeks of lockdown, it had 1,800. Even without a pandemic, our trauma counsellors in northern Uganda cope with difficult circumstances in the aftermath of a devastating […]

Most of us have a friend or relative who treats us like a free counselling service: we do our best to be attentive when they want to talk about their problems. Yet, in some cases, it isn’t a two way street. Perhaps they aren’t keen on listening when we want to vent, or they take […]