CHILDREN OF NIGHT

A founder of the nonprofit group expected poverty but was astounded by what she saw.
By MARY ELLEN PELLEGRINI
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
GREENFORD -- In July 2005, Green Township resident Julie Maruskin found herself in a war-torn, poverty-stricken nation halfway around the world.
The "experience of a lifetime," as she termed it, was part of Maruskin and her husband Jerry's mission to assist vulnerable youths of the world through their Ohio-incorporated nonprofit charitable organization, Hearts For a Safe Harbor.
The couple's first trip outside the United States was spurred by an article in The Vindicator in early November 2003. A short piece on 15 countries' using children for armed conflict caught Maruskin's attention.
"I just couldn't believe it," she said. That winter, Maruskin, a curriculum consultant with the Columbiana County Educational Service Center and a former teacher, spent countless hours searching the Web, making phone calls and reading.
"The more I researched, it seemed like everything kept coming back to Uganda," she said.
What's going on
There, a rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army, and the Ugandan Army have been fighting for 20 years.
According to Maruskin's research, 80 percent of soldiers in the LRA are children. Wanting to better understand their stories, the couple joined The Rev. Donald Dunson of Euclid, a Catholic missionary who raises funds to educate Ugandan children, on a trip to Gulu in northern Uganda last summer.
"We expected to see poverty, but I never expected to see poverty at this level," Maruskin said.
She met barefoot children in tattered clothes subsisting on one meal a day, visited a malnutrition ward consisting of an area of red clay under a few trees outside the local hospital and discovered that pain relievers, over-the-counter medications and first aid supplies were unavailable.
"We cried for two weeks. It was such a humbling experience to see these people in such poverty and despair yet they still had faith and hope."
The majority of northern Ugandans live in Internally Displaced Persons camps -- rows and rows of huts where up to 5,000 people share one drinking-water well.
At night, the LRA enters the camps, ropes and ties children, who are then forced to kill other children and sometimes their parents. Boys are taken to Sudan to be trained as soldiers. Girls become wives of commanders and bear children.
To avoid abduction, 40,000 to 50,000 children leave IDP camps each night and walk 2 to 6 miles into northern Uganda's three main cities -- Gulu, Kitgum and Padar. The "night commuters," as they are called, sleep in empty barns and on verandas.
"Thousands of kids stream in at night carrying a blanket or grass mat to sleep on," Maruskin said. At sunrise, the children walk back to IDP camps for food and schooling, carrying brooms to sweep their tracks.
Maruskin was overwhelmed by the inescapable tragedy.
"It was just so hard to hear these children's stories of seeing so many people with machetes and guns."
Among the many children she met was Sunday Obote, an 18-year-old boy who had been abducted at age 7 and escaped eight years later. Another was Bianca, an 8-year-old girl who was born in captivity and recently released. During Maruskin's visit, Obote received his first taste of tea, sugar and butter and Bianca her first toy, an African doll.
Nonprofit group
To assist the night commuters and other vulnerable youths, Maruskin founded Hearts For a Safe Harbor, an Ohio-incorporated nonprofit group. In March 2005, a 10-member board comprising local community members was formed. Maruskin serves as board president.
The organization is raising funds to build a Safe Harbor House complex in Uganda.
"It will be a place for temporary shelter, counseling and eventually vocational training," Maruskin said. In time she hopes to add a community library.
An acre behind a local church and surrounded by a high wall has been donated by the Catholic Archdiocese of Gulu for four Safe Harbor units.
The archdiocese also will operate and maintain the Safe Harbor complex.
Building plans have been approved, and men from the community are hand-making the bricks. The men also will provide the labor for construction. The target date for completion is June 2007.
Has compassion
"Now that we've met the children, we can't turn our backs," she said.
The organization's goal for the Ugandan project is $500,000 for the four buildings and furnishings.
To assist in these efforts, 7th and 8th grade SMARTS pupils at Eagle Heights Academy in Youngstown are making and selling African baskets. The Columbiana High School Interact Club will host a Safe Harbor night April 28.
In the fall, the organization will begin its "I Am Part of the Heart" campaign, which will challenge 1,000 organizations across the country to each raise $1,000 for the building construction in Gulu.
To help or learn more about Hearts For a Safe Harbor, go to www.heartsforasafeharbor.com.