George Odora: From Child Soldier to Civil Engineer for Peace
Nearly 2 million Ugandans fled from their homes during the brutal civil war that began in the northern region of the country in 1986 and went on for 2 decades. Human rights violations and war crimes were committed by both sides of the conflict, but especially those crimes perpetrated by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). As the violence escalated in the northern part of Uganda in 1988, 40 camps for Internally Displaced Persons, “IDP Camps”, were created. Farmers had to move their entire families out of wide-open fertile land into the crowded IDP camps; each family had a mud hut with a few feet between each hut. Children, like George Odora, were abducted and converted into soldiers.
George Odora, a 26-year-old Ugandan who made it through the horrors of the civil war, managed to obtain a degree in civil engineering despite huge odds, and decided upon a career of building houses for IDP refugees to build homes on what was their land before the war. George was recently awarded a small grant by a German foundation, enough to construct about 30 houses to begin to replace the dilapidated IDP camps in the war-torn region where he grew up. George’s grant from the Dekeyser & Friends Fellowship Program was based on his proposal to establish a sustainable project to build housing for those who are being evicted from destroyed IDP camps