By: Myles Crawley (with excerpts from The Voice Project‘s website)

For over two decades war has ravaged Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan and Eastern Congo. Joseph Kony’s LRA has made abducting children and forcing them to fight his chief weapon of war, even making them kill their friends and even their own families. As Kony’s power is starting to ebb, many former soldiers are escaping but hide in the bush, afraid to return home because of reprisals for the atrocities they were forced to commit.

Women of Northern Uganda, widows, rape survivors and former abductees have been banding together in groups to support each other and those orphaned by the war and diseases so prevalent in the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps. And they are singing songs. The lyrics let the former soldiers know that they are forgiven and that they should come home, and the songs are passed by word of mouth out into the bush, as far as the Sudan and DR Congo. And it’s working. Former LRA are returning and for the first time 22 years the region has a chance at real peace.

At the album release party for their debut “Up From Below” at LA’s Roosevelt Hotel in July, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros raised money for the Gulu Widows Group of Uganda. The women used the band’s donation to start a farm to sustain their community. They recently had their first harvest; to celebrate and show the band their appreciation they made this video in which they sing the band’s song “Home”. This is paramount evidence of how music can change our world. The band’s version of “Home” is below, along with the Gulu Widows Group of Uganda’s version. Please watch both.

There is one more video below, which will hopefully provide a better understanding of the beautiful simplicity of what these Ugandan women and children are doing to help heal their fragile country. This video was produced by a nonprofit called The Voice Project who are spearheading the effort to secure land leases as well as the purchase of small tracts of land for the Ugandan women to live and farm on.