"Shoreline high school students mentor team from Uganda in robot building challenge"

SHORELINE, Wash. - It's a partnership born out of a shared love of robotics, but the students working together at King's High School in Shoreline couldn't have come from more different backgrounds.
All this week, five students from Beacon of Hope, a secondary school in Soroti, Uganda have been laboring with their mentors, the members of the King's High School CyberKnights robotics team, to build a robot for the First Tech Challenge competition.

It's a monumental step forward for the team from Uganda, whose members were once child soldiers, kidnapped from their families and forced to commit atrocities by Lord’s Resistance Army, the rebels fighting government forces in the country’s bloody civil war.

"The only thing I could see was death and at any time they could kill us," said Denish Odele, now 24, who was forced to learn to handle an AK-47 and had to survive by shooting people he knew.
He showed a scar the length of his forearm where a rebel commander cut it open with a bayonet after Denish didn't follow his order to find banana leaves for dinner.

For 40,000 children caught in the Ugandan civil war, hope was fleeting and survival was dim.
"We would not have any big dream," said Denish.

But then came a remarkable turnaround.

Denish was captured by government forces and beaten but survived. He made it to Beacon of Hope, run by Seattle based non-profit Pilgrim Africa. The intent of the school is to provide an educational opportunity for children caught in the civil war, many who survived without their parents..."
Read the full article at its source: http://komonews.com/news/local/shoreline-high-school-stude nts-mentor-team-from-uganda-in-robot-building-challenge