Organisation Profile

AYENET was started by three youth to unite the youth, mitigate land conflicts and domestic violence as a result of unemployment, idleness and drug addiction (alcoholism), poverty and build peace among the community. This was after the effects of the civil unrest by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). As most of our people were resettling to their original homelands, there were a lot of land wrangles. Our aim was therefore to actively engage the youth to contribute to community development through participation as well as living in harmonious life.

Our preliminary activities/projects were peace building through games and sports where peace messages were passed to the players and spectators of about 250 persons. Conflict resolutions and peace building through community dialogue was conducted in four parishes of Agoro and there has since then been reduced number of youth involved in land conflicts.

Since we started, there has been realization of unity among the youth. The youth are able to participate in development process as well as influencing decision making and the organization’s capacity was enhanced by acquiring office consumables and transparency prevailed.

Our current programs being undertaken include conflict resolution and peace building through community dialogue and drama, economic empowerment through agriculture, human rights awareness raising and campaigns among the members and capacity building of members’ organizations.

Our organization’s most important success so far includes;
•    Reduced number of youth involvement in land conflicts and ability to participate in community development
•    Many land conflicts have been settled peacefully through dialogues as opposed to previous violent ones.
•    Acquisition of assets like oxen ploughs which made it easy for the group to assist its members to economically strive through agricultural activities.
•    Ability to run and maintain an office space.
•    Six youth teams were actively involved in peace activities through games and sports.
•    Hosted the district celebration of international youth day for 2010.

With limited technical knowledge, the group cannot fundraise money due to absence of a skillful person who can write funding proposals. As a result, the group can not afford to acquire more office equipment. This has also made it very difficult to have access to easier communication modes. The long distance to town and between areas of operation is challenging as we do not have an organizational car to reach most of our beneficiaries.

We are striving to do much better and this can only be achieved through continuous capacity building of staff and more so by fundraising for support of programmes.

We would like to acknowledge Kitgum NGO Forum for their technical advice and support, ACORD for training members on monitoring and evaluation, Gulu district NGO Forum for their invaluable support and lastly, the sub county and district local government officials for their tireless efforts.