On her visits to Uganda over the past 15 years, Christine Atcheson has seen what she calls the “pinnacle of evil”.

Villages burned, women raped and people mutilated and killed by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army.

Mrs Atcheson, the Bermudian founder of Children of Hope, has made it her mission to help widows and orphans in the war-torn region. Her philosophy? Try and save one person at a time.

“One thing a lot of people ask me is how can I handle doing this,” Mrs Atcheson said. “And one thing that helps me is years ago I read a quote from Mother Teresa. I don’t compare myself to her, but she is one of my heroes. She had asked God to give her one person [whose life she could touch] and said she did everything she could for that one.

“That’s how it is basically. Anything that’s of God and doing good for humanity, I believe it will grow and expand and it certainly has.

“We just have to focus on the one person in front on us because if you thought of the 1.5 million orphans just in Uganda you would say ‘That’s ridiculous. I can’t do anything. Who am I?’”

Children of Hope has been instrumental in helping to rescue Florence, a young mother-of-three who had been raped by a member of the LRA.

Abducted as a child and forced into sex slavery, she became pregnant as a teen.

She and her children had been walking for days on end when Mrs Atcheson found her.

“Her children couldn’t go to school and were rejects from villages because they were considered part of the LRA, even though their involvement was against their will,” Mrs Atcheson explained.

The charity has since found a mud hut for the young woman’s family to live in and also pays for tuition so the children can go to school. After learning that Florence was HIV-positive, they began paying for her medication and clinic visits.

Children of Hope currently operates a home for 13 orphans in Gulu, Northern Uganda, providing them with “education, medication, good food, but most importantly love”.

Thanks to money raised, they have been able to buy a large plot of land where they plan to build more houses for the children, a vegetable garden and area for livestock. They later hope to build a school and clinic for those in the community.

The charity also offers programmes to help older widows find work so they can care for their families.

Ugandan tribal law dictates that when a widow loses her husband, everything she owns automatically goes to his family.

The family might take care of the widow and her family but if they were poor, starving or lacking morals or ethics, they would take everything and throw the woman out of the home.

“One of the older ladies we work with was living in the bus depot when we found her,” Mrs Atcheson said. “Now she is involved in a programme that we have where they make bracelets, necklaces, earrings and cloth bags and we bring them to Bermuda and the US to sell.

“All the profits go to the widows so they can have a home and a sack of rice and beans.”

Mrs Atcheson, who started several AIDS-related charities in Bermuda, learned about the struggles of the women and children in Uganda after being invited to speak at a conference on the topic of HIV and AIDS in 1999.

During an off day she was touring the countryside when she saw people with bloodied hands making gravel in the blazing, hot sun.

The sad thing was the driver who accompanied Mrs Atcheson said not many people passed by there to buy the gravel, so their hard work was largely in vain.

“It was that instant that God used to pierce my heart,” she said. “I really had in my heart to do something for children in Uganda and I have always been a person who believes if you are allowed to see something first-hand then you need to act.

“We all see suffering on the TV and movies, but if God allows you to see it first-hand then He wants you to do something about it. That’s just what I believe.”

She found it difficult to return to Bermuda to live in the “lap of luxury”. It took her about three years to get volunteers and programmes in place to get the charity up and running.

She insisted she wouldn’t be able to do any of the work were it not for her strong religious faith.

“The amount of suffering is more than any ordinary human being could handle unless they had God to give that pain to,” Mrs Atcheson said.

“I have to feel it otherwise you become like a zombie, but then I try to give it over to God. Even now, with the lack of funding and staff I just have to say ‘You know God, this was your idea, these are your children and you will help me to take care of it’.”

For more information or to donate, visit: www.childrenofhopeug.org.