Uganda had suffered years of civil war and unrest at the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army, leaving widows and orphans in its wake.  The physical and emotional scars ran deep, but we held hope a that a community, once unified by pain, can become a community unified in healing through group-based mental health programming.  

Today, Uganda is the top refugee receiving nation in Africa. We continue to work there in 5 locations around the country, to provide targeted, culturally relevant quality mental health support to some of the 1.4 million people registered as refugees.  

In 2016, in response to the attempted genocide of the Yazidi people, the war on ISIS, and the Syrian refugee crisis, we set up our first Tutapona office in the Middle East in Duhok, Kurdistan, Northern Iraq.  These recent crises, combined with the slaughter of 50,000 Kurds in the eighties under the regime of Saddam Hussein, have caused significant damage to social structures and to individual mental health in the region.

Our group-based mental health programming has had notable success in several camps there, helping families and communities overcome barriers and experiences that have made them feel hopeless, bitter, and forgotten.

 In September of 2022, we officially began the process of starting programming in eastern Europe and Ukraine in response to the war in Ukraine. We feel that God is calling us to use the skills and abilities we have been using with others for 15 years here, and believe that here, too, we will be healed!