About Us

THIS IS A MOVEMENT OF LOVE

Zion Project is a faith-based organization that runs holistic
rehabilitation homes in Northern Uganda for both girl child soldiers
and their children, and Congolese refugee women who are trying to
escape prostitution. The vision is to really love these girls in a
safe place and usher them into the presence of God so that He might
transform & heal their hearts through intimacy with Him. We offer
mentoring, counseling, life skills, parenting, vocational training, &
economic empowerment based upon each individual girl's dreams and
goals. Our desire is to empower them into becoming women of God with
purpose and destiny so that they might bring more of the Kingdom to
Uganda.

We hope to build relationships with individuals and churches who are
passionate lovers of Jesus and are led by the Holy Spirit.

We want to see people doing what they love
and imparting what God has placed inside of them. We want laid down
lovers and learners who want to love and pray for Uganda.

Sarita Hartz, Founder & Director

In 2006 Sarita lived in Uganda for five months and saw with her own eyes things she had only read about. She saw the disease, starvation, and desperation of communities that were now forced to live in crowded camps because of a 20 year long war the outside world knows little about. She heard the community say they wanted to go back home and they wanted to work their own land. She saw their courage, and she experienced the beauty of a people who fight every day to survive and do it often with laughter. But she also saw the injustice. Most of all, the young girls not going to school, but caring for infants as a result of their rapes. Sarita sat down and listened to these girls and found that while some are taken to reception centers upon escaping their captors, most do not receive counseling or care after being returned to their camp. Their neighbors often call them and their children "killers."

Frustrated by larger organizations, she decided to start her own to ensure that donor's money would be invested where they intended: in the lives of those who need it most. Tired of reading headlines and feeling powerless to do something, she felt compelled to begin something that would be a movement of love and encourage people to take action.
Sarita moved back to Uganda in July 2008 and has been there ever since living with the girls and loving them. She has seen God's power completely transform their lives.

To contact Sarita, email her at sarita@zionproject.org.

Grace Akallo, Advisor & Advocate

When she was 15 years old, Grace was kidnapped from an all-girls Catholic school in northern Uganda and forced to fight with the LRA. Before she escaped after seven months, she was brutalized, buried alive, and made to march hundreds of miles barefoot, with food so scarce she sometimes had to eat lizards and rats to survive.

She saw terrible things done to other captive children. She was forced to be the "wife" of a rebel commander three times her age. There were times when death seemed preferable to life: She tried twice to kill herself with her own gun, as she had seen numerous others do. In late spring of 1997, she was sent out again to look for food and water. At 16, she was emaciated, a walking skeleton. In the seven months she had been a prisoner, five of her St. Mary's classmates had been killed. On this day, it felt like the end for her as well. "That was the time I said 'God, I'm ready to die,' " she says. "I was tired of running. I was tired of being sent to fight." She sat near a tree, determined not to move. Then, she says, "I heard a voice telling me to get up and go. . . . I think it was God telling me to leave.

Grace survived with her spirit and humanity intact, and eventually made it to the United States. She recently graduated from Gordon College. She met and married Jonathan Baiden and just had her first baby.

"My friends are still there," Grace says. "They've never seen their parents; they've never seen their home. They have not released the children." For years after she escaped, she repeated the same prayer: "God, why don't you give me wings, and I can fly and help my friends."

"God did not give me wings," she says. "But maybe the book . . ." She leaves the sentence unfinished, as if afraid to let herself hope too much.

You can buy Grace's book, Girl Soldier, at Amazon.com.
Please enter "Zion Project" as your charity of choice and click the Amazon.com icon.
By doing so, 1.5% of your purchase will be donated to Zion Project.

BECOME A PART OF OUR TEAM!
Email info@zionproject.org for more information