Pader Girls Academy

In 2006, the Human Rights Center worked with the MacArthur Foundation to survey former abductees and returning child soldiers from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda to study the impact of the country’s civil war on youth. To fill its ranks, the LRA abducted tens of thousands of children and adults to serve as porters and soldiers. Rebels were known to force girls as young as twelve into child marriage and sexual slavery. Girls who were able to escape back to their communities were shunned by their families for their perceived connection to the LRA, especially if they came back with children born of rape.

Against this backdrop, HRC met Alice Achan — an extraordinary social worker who had lived through the civil war herself, and was passionate about educating girls for social change. HRC worked with Alice to start the Pader Girls Academy, a school built to serve child-mothers who had escaped the LRA and were living in exile from their communities. Pader Girls Academy, now known as Kworo High School, was the “first school in Uganda to offer secondary education to child-mothers, supporting these girls and their babies with childcare facilities and a flexible education program (Te-Kworo Foundation).” Today, Alice runs three boarding schools and a medical maternity clinic. HRC honored Alice Achan for its 20th Anniversary Award.