The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday August 15, 2007 - 15 Recreation programs crucial to rebuilding Uganda Continued from page 14 each day, almost all of whom are children younger than five. "Through our sports program we distribute treated mosquito nets as a preventative measure, and we target underprivileged people who cannot afford to buy a mosquito net," said Kunihira. As if disease was not a great enough adversary to overcome, Kunihira's group is also trying to save Uganda's children from the cruel inventions of men. "This program targets Northern Uganda, where we have had a war going on for the last 20 years. There have been a lot of landmines planted by the rebels," said Kunihira. "The biggest victims have been the children. They get blown up by the landmines when they are out playing. They pick them up thinking they are something to play with, not knowing how dangerous they are." In this program, entitled Mine Education Through Sport, Africa Youth Ministries targets primary school children, hanging posters in their schools featuring pictures of a variety of mines so the children will know to avoid them. The sport program is also crucial in Northern Uganda as it helps to ease the trauma of "We have a generation of young people who have been born in war, lived in war, and all they know is war. " Albert Kunihira, Country-Director of the Africa Youth Ministries Uganda children who were abducted from their homes by the rebel group known as the Lord's Resistance Army and forced to commit atrocities as child soldiers. "Through what we call play therapy, we have children receiving some trauma counseling," said Kunihira. "We have a generation of young people who have been born in war, lived in war, and all they know is war. When we are doing counseling and we tell children to express their life experience through drawings, we find that 99 per cent of the children draw things that have to do with the war. Violence, armored vehicles, soldiers carrying guns, and that shows you that that is what is stuck in their minds. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to rehabilitate these children to make them focus on something else. If this is not done carefully we will have endless wars in Northern Uganda." With so many issues to combat, the Africa Youth Ministries' need for funds and equipment is obvious. Some of these needs have been met through regular donations from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Other program funding has been handled by the Africa Youth Ministries themselves. "We locally finance our budget by about 60 per cent. We have set up income generating projects whereby we generate funds to run our own projects and activities," said Kunihira. "We do quite a lot of art craftwork, which we sell off to raise funds. Part of this art craftwork is done by the children. By doing this we train them in skills so they learn not to be dependent all their lives but that they should do something on their own to earn a living. They make baskets, they make necklaces, they make greeting cards and we also train them in baking. They make a lot of bakery products which are sold on the open market." Despite these efforts more is needed with the search for funds leading Kunihira to Oakville. Although the Canadian gov- ernment paid Kunihira's way to Canada so he could participate in an Edmonton peace conference, his friend, Marg Bartlett of Oakville, persuaded him to stop by and raise awareness of his cause. Bartlett, who met Kunihira in Uganda when she was visiting her foster child, felt the Oakville community would be particularly receptive to Kunihira's efforts to help Uganda's youth through participation in sports. "Oakville is the soccer capital of the world," she said. So far Bartlett's belief has not been proven wrong, with the Oakville Soccer Club donating a box of brand new soccer balls, along with jerseys and shoes, while Oakville's Soccer World has donated 300 soccer balls. Anyone interested in donating soccer equipment or funds is asked to contact Bartlett at 416-606-8134 or email sparkybartlett@sympatico.ca. PEGGY'S distinctive ladies fashions prices slashed fall stock arriving daily Hopedale Mall, Oakville 905-465-3499 1 24 4 INCREDIBLE 70 TO UNBELIEVABLE Most Summer Stock 98 98 Designer Fashions up to % OFF FINAL DAYS MOVING SALE HUGE DISCOUNTS ON ALL IN STOCK CARPET, ROOM SIZE RUGS, REMNANTS AND AREA RUGS. ALL FLOORING MARKED DOWN. NO PAYMENTS UNTIL JULY 2008 OAC "WE'D RATHER SELL IT THAN MOVE IT!" CUSTOM INSTALLATION AVAILABLE LAMINATE SALE 20% Carpet Underpad 19¢ /sq ft 40% 40% 99¢ Laminate Underpad 9¢ /sq ft Appleby Appleby pleby y Walkers Walkers QEW EW CELEBRITY FLOORING 4057 Fairview St. Burlington 905-632-9338 JUST EAST OF WALKERS LINE Fairview Fairview irvi r SUMMER HOURS :MON-WED, FRI 9AM-6PM, THURS 9AM-8PM, SAT 10AM-5PM, SUN CLOSED