It is graduation day. Young people of different ages are being passed out to start life as responsible productive members of the community after a year of learning different skills. The excitement is fever high.

In the compound, sitting resplendent in the sun, an assortment of implements neatly laid out, waiting for their new owners. They include tailoring tools, baking tools, items to be used in carpentry and so on. The young people shall be divided into groups and they will take the items and use them to make a decent life. They wait to be passed out.

This is the Gulu Municipality Youth Education Programme (YEP) Centre, an undertaking by the Norwegian Refugee Council. Youths in northern Uganda are being given a chance to pursue a normal life after the disruption of the war between the rebels of the Lords' Resistance Movement and the government of Uganda. Though many have missed a 'normal' education unlike many of their compatriots in the south of the country, young people are taking advantage of the open window to get skills before it is too late.

"The Centre is run in partnership with the Northern Uganda Transition Initiative (NUTI),"Kenneth Kakiiza, NRC's Gulu project coordinator for education says. "The graduates get contracts to makes basics for schools and sub-counties and it is really working well." Mr Kakiiza further says the graduates of YEP centers like this have been contracted to construct classrooms and teachers' houses, as witnessed in Kitgum.

The centre is being handed over to the Diocese of Northern Uganda as a way to keep it running as the NGO targets other areas that need urgent intervention. NRC is involved in Pader, Kitgum, Lamwo, Amuru, Moyo, Arua, Kyangwali, Kiryandongo, Nakivale, and Gulu. Education is one of its many sectors in a community devastated by war.

The centres have classrooms for the different age groups, a field where the young people can stretch as a way to take a break from learning and a kitchen where the meals are prepared. There are also babies' huts. Many young girls all over the northern region have been defiled and their babies can be a deterrent factor in their education, according to Mr Kakiiza. "It is an important facility because if they can bring their babies here, they can learn as baby sitters take care of the babies."

Mary Amito, a mother says she is 20 years old. She suckles her baby having left him for the last two hours in the hands of the baby sitters. "I am grateful for this opportunity because there is no way I could have done it with a baby if this arrangement was not available," she says as she soothes her child.

Like her, Abolo, 16 years old, sitting next to her baby and making cooing sounds, is here to learn tailoring. It is still early days as the girls still have 10 months before they graduate like the group in the building across from where the baby hut stands. The girls hope to join the success story of others who have gone through the YEP programme and started living relatively comfortable lives. "I hope to become a seamstress when I finish. I can make dresses and make money," Abolo says.

"We hire older women to take care of the babies as the girls attend school," Lucy Acan, the YEP project officer says. "It has been quite a big help and we are thinking of creating space for the children to play."

According to Mr Kakiiza, the NRC's policy to give the girl child an education is a priority area. "To enable them to have an equal opportunity to acquire the training, we have to build these day-care huts."