Peace Culture Village and the South Sudan NGO Helping Hands are jointly developing a youth rehabilitation workshop.

Many young people in South Sudan have suffered extreme trauma. Some have been child soldiers. Some have killed. Some have watched comrades die. Some have seen their families or friends killed, and some have been badly injured themselves. All suffer from some level of PTSD, and many are having trouble reintegrating into normal South Sudanese society.

To facilitate the rehabilitation of these young people, Peace Culture Village and Helping Hands intend to take as many of these young people as possible to Hiroshima, Japan. There, they will participate with Japanese youth in a workshop designed to help them encounter a safe, warm and loving community within a society more profoundly peaceful than any they have ever known. At the same time, they will shock Japanese youth into realizing that the affluent peace in which they have grown up is not to be taken for granted. Both groups will gain from an in-depth encounter with people so different and yet so similar.

This workshop will be a powerful, life-changing experience for everyone involved, but none of it will be possible without your help. We need 3 million yen (US$30,000) to bring each group of ten South Sudanese to Japan and offer them the experience described above. And we want to bring as many groups as we can afford. Please help us help the youth of South Sudan. Help us make this program an ongoing reality.