Rebuilding a Neighborhood Thousands of Miles Away

This week we talked about neighborhoods and how the agents of sociology affect our everyday lives. That our peers and family members shape us to be who we are today. We even looked at our own values and where they came from. But the one that most surprised me was neighborhoods. How they affect us in the future. How neighborhoods with divorce or single parent families are more likely to have higher crime rate. But what about a neighborhood that  most children had NO parents. They might have a grandparent or elder living with them but most only have themselves (as a teen) to live with. To support themselves. To learn values and lessons from. This is the reality in Northern Uganda.  In the many villages and Displace persons camps. These neighborhoods the former child soldier of the LRA live in terrible conditions stricken with hunger, diseases, and poverty. These once independent African people now are forced to live dependant on the government and aid. Before they were stricken by the civil war and Joseph Kony their villages were healthy. The people thrived and crime was low. They were successful farmers and fed off of others joy and practiced the wonderful traditions of their Acholi culture.  Even when the farming times were tough they had their village and farms to “cheer them up” and help them get through the tough times. Now however there are no parents or whole families in the villages. The children don’t have the space to farm in the camps. They have lost all the traditions and values that have been taught in their villages.  Most unfortunate is they have lost hope. These children feel that they have lost hope In their future and they don’t have that same village they use to have to support them and tell them there is hope.  It shows that even half way around the world neighborhoods do affect us. Yet by helping the invisible children we can become part of their “extended neighborhood”. When we donate money and time to help build schools and safer villages we help to rebuild that “neighborhood” that affects the lives of people everywhere.