The struggles and successes of women and children from Northern Uganda stricken by rebel war were brought to life Tuesday night as Mary Chind and Dr. Neil Mandsager shared their own experiences in the Eastern [corrected from: Western] African country where people are fighting to recover from depression, thoughts of suicide and years of devastation.

In 2006, after hearing from his brother Conrad about his recent trip to Africa and the hardships he had witnessed, Mandsager became convinced something had to be done.

It was then that Mandsager made his first trip back to Africa in more than 50 years. Born in Cameroon, Mandsager couldn’t believe that even after 50 years away, little had changed. Mandsager said people were still dying from basic diseases and extreme poverty, but the greatest problem he saw was the failing infrastructure.

“ChildVoice [International] came to be as a way to provide that infrastructure, as a way to get the children back on their feet,” Mandsager said

ChildVoice International was established in April 2006 after several visits to Uganda with a goal “to restore the voices of children silenced by war.”

In Uganda, the Lord’s Resistance Army began kidnapping children to become soldiers and women to be used as sex slaves. For 20 years, the rebels abducted an estimated 30,000 children from their homes in Northern Uganda and forced them to commit violent acts upon villagers.

Chind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for The Des Moines Register, traveled to Uganda with ChildVoice International in 2009 to capture and share the story of women and children traumatized by the devastating war. She took photos of people with a different stories to tell, from children with swollen bellies and red hair to women dancing and laughing, making the slow recovery back to who they were before the war.

On Tuesday, her work was on display around the Pioneer Room of the Memorial Union. The exhibit was titled, “Silent No More: Ugandan Children of War.”

“I knew it would be difficult to portray through photos the real struggles these women had gone through,” Chind said. “The hardest thing for me was to bring their stories back in an impactful way.”

Mandsager, an obstetrician specializing in high-risk pregnancies in Des Moines, has been spending time in Uganda every year since ChildVoice International was founded six years ago.

ISU students have been involved with the organization from the beginning. Fifth-year architecture students were asked to create a design for a new facility to be built for ChildVoice as a project. It was only recently, though, that ChildVoice received a 70-acre plot of land in Northern Uganda, where it plans to build a brand new facility.

On Tuesday night, the project plans and designs were on display. The construction of the students’ design, Mandsager said, will begin as soon as the finances are secured, which should be within the next month or so.

ChildVoice International has a number of opportunities for ISU students also, whether it is working as an intern, helping to sell beads created by the women in the program, volunteering or even partnering with ChildVoice.