Beaded Memory Project: Women's Advocacy Network (WAN)
The Women's Advocacy Network (WAN) members are survivors of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) civil war fought for over 20 years in northern Uganda. During the war, they were kidnapped and forced to be child brides and child soldiers. Decades later they are still traumatized by their war memories. To help heal, the women survivors bonded together and decided to record their war memories and stories on a large cloth using paper beads. The women started out by making thousands of paper beads. Then using chalk, they designed on a large black cloth, images from the war. They then proceeded to sew the beads onto the black cloth. Stitch by stitch and bead by bead, they captured their war memories and stories on the cloth.