Forum to Spotlight Aid Effort in Conflict-Torn Uganda

Peter Keller, executive director of Aid Africa, will describe how the nonprofit is transforming the lives of people living in desperate poverty in northern Uganda when he leads a Community Forum in Newbury Park on Saturday, June 11.

Keller will discuss basic, cost-effective steps that are making a difference for families displaced during a reign of terror orchestrated by notorious warlord Joseph Kony. When families returned to their native villages, they had no homes, crops, tools and resources for getting resettled. Kony is an international fugitive who forced children to become soldiers in his Lord's Resistance Army, ordered massacres and mutilations and displaced an estimated 1.5 million Ugandan civilians in a 20-year guerrilla campaign, according to the International Criminal Court and published reports.

In his 7 p.m. presentation at the Conejo Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Keller will talk about Aid Africa's effort to supply 1,000 rural villages with simple six-brick stoves, low-cost shallow wells for clean water and basic supplies that will save the lives of women and children during childbirth. The group wants to plant 1 million trees by 2025 to reforest the region. Its ultimate aim is to transform the lives of 100,000 Ugandans.

Aid Africa describes the needs in Ugandan villages as basic but urgent. Women and girls must walk long distances to get water that is often polluted and carrying diseases. Meals are cooked over open fires that burn scarce fuel quickly and fill homes with smoke that causes lung diseases, cataracts and blindness. Each year, 500,000 African babies die on the first day of their lives and one in 13 women in sub-Saharan Africa die of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, Aid Africa reports. Trees are needed for housing, fruit, shade and fuel for cooking.

At the forum, Keller will discuss ways to support Aid Africa beyond financial donations, including volunteering of skills, gifts in kind and even traveling to Africa to join in the work.

The forum at 3327 Old Conejo Road in Newbury Park is open to the public and free; donations will be welcomed. For information, visit cvuuf.org/community-forum or call the church office at (805) 498-9548.