Source: Tonic.com
BY LAUREN LE VINE
What began with songs, words and music has turned into a multi-dimensional nonprofit dedicated to helping the women of Northern Uganda gain traction in the midst of Africa’s longest-running war.

It all started with Joe Purdy’s song “Suitcase.” That was the song Hunter Heaney filmed a group of Ugandan women singing in the midst of the longest war in Africa’s history.

A few months later, Heaney ran into Joe Purdy at a wedding, and his friend Chris Holmes told Purdy the story of Hunter teaching the aforementioned song to the women in Uganda, then grabbed his computer to show the video. The singer was so moved by what the two had shown him, he looked up and said, “Whatever I can do to help, whatever you guys need, the answer is forever yes.”

From there, the chain began. Just like the women in Africa had done a cover of his song, Joe Purdy then recorded a cover of a song from an artist he greatly admired — REM — for The Voice Project. Mike Mills of REM then passed the torch to Billy Bragg, who in turn recorded a song for Joanna Newsom. Other artists who have recorded songs for the project include Tom Waits, Peter Gabriel (below left), Julian Casablancas and Cat Power.

Chris, Hunter and two of their friends use these songs to power The Voice Project, an organization that helps victims of the war in Northern Uganda. The project has two main goals: “To AMPLIFY the message in their songs in order to support the peace movement, and to assist the women in their efforts to EMPOWER themselves economically in order to better their lives, create real social change, and to sustain peace.”

A Peace Movement in a Time of Strife

For almost 25 years, Northern Uganda — and now parts of Southern Sudan and Eastern Congo — has been ravaged by Africa’s longest-running conflict. The LRA, or “Lord’s Resistance Army,” has committed horrible human rights atrocities as their main method of warfare. Abducting children is their main recruitment tool; the boys are forced to join the army, while girls become wives for LRA commanders or movement leader Joseph Kony himself. The children are told that their entire village has been destroyed and no one from their family remains alive, and they are often forced to murder their own friends and family members.

In response to this horrifying situation, a movement of peace, hope and the truest embodiment of the human ability to forgive has formed among the women of Northern Uganda. Hunter Heaney first encountered a group of these women in an IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camp in Agoro, a tiny village on the border of Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan. Heaney had traveled to Uganda to put his managerial skills to work setting up a job training center at a refugee camp.

During one of his trips into town, Heaney was asked to meet with a local women’s group, which consisted of widows and women whose husbands had abandoned them because they had been raped. The women were also taking care of orphaned children who had lost their parents to the fighting or disease in the camps. They had a small bead-making operation and were thinking about buying a grinding mill. The women pooled their money together to purchase bead-making supplies, or if a member of the group needed medical care, the money went towards that. They were basically running their own microfinance program within their community.

“I was so blown away by the strength, by the resourcefulness of these women, and by the end of the meeting I said that there were two things I wanted to tell them: one was that I wanted to carry their story back with me because I really feel that people where I’m from, we could learn a lot from them, how they are really taking care of each other, and secondly that, somehow my friends and I are going to figure out a way to help,” Heaney tells Tonic.

To thank Heaney for his words, the women broke into the song that they sing to let former child soldiers abducted by the LRA know that it was okay to come home. “These women who had every reason in the world to hate or give up, they were singing these songs to forgive and to welcome home not just their sons and husbands, but even the very people who had perpetrated the atrocities against them … it just seemed like the greatest act of forgiveness and also the greatest use of music I’d ever heard,” Heaney says.

After the women sang for Hunter, they insisted that he teach them some songs of his own. He taught the women Joe Purdy’s “Suitcase” and a Dead Moon cover called “It’s OK” that Pearl Jam used to sing; these two songs were the first that came to mind as he listened to the women sing.

For the rest of his time in Uganda, Heaney spent time traveling from village to village, meeting with different groups and exchanging songs. “The protocol was always the same, I’d ask them to teach me theirs, and I had to teach some in return,” he explains.

The Program

Heaney refers to what The Voice Project does in Uganda as an “exchange of value,” explaining it as follows: “It really is a message for the world, one that we all can benefit from — we can learn so much from their strength, their beauty, their songs and art. We want to get their message out there — what they’re doing and how they’re doing it — to the world so as many people can see it and maybe even in the smallest way, perhaps be affected by it.”

The Voice Project founders go into communities and ask how they can support them, what they are doing that has been successful and where do they see the greatest needs in the community. In the first community they visited, the women said that the support they needed most on the ground was help in starting their own business.

With that, the Livelihood program was born. This program includes vocational and education training for the women, as well as rehabilitation for the former child soldiers. Self-sustaining programs like this one will prove essential in supporting these communities of women, as “economic empowerment leads to social empowerment,” Hunter explained. Economic development will also improve the hopeless conditions that allow terror organizations like the LRA to thrive.

The Voices

The Voice Project relies on music and word of mouth to spread the story of the brave Ugandan women who have started a peace movement amidst their country’s longest running war. Their cause is so meaningful and important that the founders have been able to get some of the biggest names in the music business today to help spread the message and raise money for the women in Uganda.

The artists have all been enthusiastic and extremely moved by the story of the women. “[Artists like] Dawes were incredible because they jumped in to the project not knowing who we were but just knowing the mission of The Voice Project. They were the first shoot that we did and still one of the best because of the enthusiasm and talent in their performance,” Anna Gabriel tells Tonic.

“One of the interesting things is how we all are connected to each other, and folks in music are no different. They tour together, talk, share managers and see each other at shows, collaborate on albums, and they talk, so it’s been amazing to see how quickly the story is circulating and how many people are reaching out to us wanting to get involved,” Anna says.

The Voice Project is now focused on expanding the efforts of an organization called A River Blue, which runs rehabilitation programs and vocational training. “With just a little money,” Heaney says, “We could help double the size of their facilities.”

To lend your voice to the cause, click here.