Heather Bellamy spoke with Gulu Mission about the devastating effect of the war in Northern Uganda, with child soldiers, extreme poverty and a lack of education and what they are doing to rebuild their community and give them hope.

Robert - one of thirty thousand child soldiers

Helen: It started because I went up into Gulu in 2008 and met Phoebe and heard her story. It was the story of the child soldiers and the fact that as young as five years old, that they would be taken by Joseph Kony and the rebels and would be taken into the bush and they would be brainwashed, traumatised and taught as young as five years old to hold a gun and to kill.

It was the story of, a couple of metres away from Bethel school, which you will hear about in a minute, that there was a marketplace and when it was in full swing there was lots and lots of people there. The rebels were hiding in the trees and they literally massacred the whole of the marketplace. There's a tree in the middle of the marketplace where you can actually see where they used to string people up and literally cut off all their limbs. You can see the machete marks in the tree. It broke my heart. It broke my heart the fact that Phoebe and her family had gone through such awful times, but also the devastation that brought to the community.

Heather: What was your vision and the vision of Gulu Mission?

Helen: The vision is to bring some hope to the community, because it was a really hopeless community. They literally had nothing left. We wanted to bring something back.

Originally it started with Phoebe's vision, where she wanted to bring back to the community the education. She started off with building three classrooms and that's when I met her. She'd built the three classrooms and they had 40 children. I thought, what can I do? I didn't do very well in school. I had no qualifications, but it broke my heart to see what had happened. I just said, come back to the UK and start as a charity and see where we go from there. So that's what I did.

Heather: What have you done so far since Gulu Mission started?

Phoebe: When Gulu mission initiative came on board to support us, when I met Helen in 2008, we just had three classes on one block. From the time they came, we have had many more classrooms added and the number of kids we now take in school has increased. We initially had just 42 to start with, but now we have 592 children coming to get education at Bethel. Currently we are doing two blocks of classrooms for high school next year, so we have really come a long way through their support.

Heather: Can you tell us about some of the lives changed? What impact has your work had on the children and the families in your community?

Phoebe: All of a sudden there is a lot of life in the community of Paminano that used to be haunted by gloom. The children are so full of life. When they come to school they can have two meals; they have mid-morning break; they take lunch at school; they get taught in the school; they learn all kinds of things and we give them a whole rounded education. When they go back home they will take some of this learning to their communities and we have really seen that community change. It's a more loving community now. It's more reconciled and it's holding on together as a result of the school and the work that we are doing.

Heather: What are both of your hopes for the coming year?

Phoebe: For me it's the high school now. We need to get that completed. Of course that comes with all kinds of challenges; it's not just the physical building, you need the furniture, the teachers and all this takes lots of resources. So at the moment that is the challenge at hand.

Helen: For me here in the UK, it's building up Gulu Mission as a charity and getting a lot more people networked with us. To get connected with us through churches, schools and making new partnerships. To raise awareness of what Northern Uganda has been through and to help them financially and to build that community in Northern Uganda.

Heather: Phoebe, this is your first time in the UK isn't it?

Phoebe: Yes.