Causecast

by SARAH NELSON, Contributing Writer

1. Invisible Children is a large-scale youth movement aiming to raise awareness for the longest running war in Africa.

2. Before it became a movement, Invisible Children began as a documentary created on a shoe-string budget by three ordinary American college guys, Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole. In 2003, the amateur filmmakers went to Sudan looking for a story, but found themselves stranded in northern Uganda. Their quest dropped them into the lap of one of the largest untold stories of our time. As a result, they created a documentary revealing one of Africa’s worst secrets: a pandemic of violence and poverty suffered by Ugandan youth caught in the middle of a civil war that has been raging for twenty-three years.

3. The civil war in northern Uganda began in the 1980s when the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, sought to overthrow the Ugandan government in response to the injustice felt by the Acholi people of the north. In an unfortunate twist, the LRA forces then began attacking the tribe which they originally claimed to support.

4. As the war in Uganda has continued over the last two decades, the increasingly desperate LRA began abducting and arming child soldiers by the thousands. Currently, 90 percent of their ranks are made up by armed children. In an effort to avoid abduction, thousands of children would leave their villages and walk to the cities to avoid being abducted while they slept. Many would walk for miles each night just to find somewhere safe to sleep.

5. On April 29, 2006, Invisible Children held a worldwide demonstration called the Global Night Commute in order to bring attention to the plight of the night commuters in northern Uganda. More than 80,000 people in 126 cities across the globe walked for miles into their city centers and slept on park benches or on the streets to make a visual call to end night commuting. Within a year of the Global Night Commute, the majority of night commuting children in Uganda began sleeping at home and ended their nightly commutes.

6. In 2007, Invisible Children launched a second awareness campaign called Displace Me to bring awareness to the dire problems that come as a result of a decade of displacement suffered by more than two million displaced Ugandans. Displacement during times of conflict often become a contributing factor to other humanitarian issues including hunger, limited access to clean water, disease and poverty that further endanger the lives of civilians. The media and political attention of the Displace Me event contributed significantly to long-awaited peace talks in Uganda.

7. Following the successful awareness brought by the Global Night Commute and Displace Me, Invisible Children released their most ambitious event to date in April of 2009. The Rescue sought to gain public support from significant members of society (including Oprah) to not only bring peace to Uganda and central Africa, but to bring the abducted children home.

8. The Invisible Children movement has expanded to include sustainable impact by fostering long-term change in education and economic incentive. Tri is a campaign in which donors commit three dollars a week to help support the rehabilitation efforts in Uganda until the war comes to an end. Schools for Schools allows schools in the United States to partner financially with secondary schools in northern Uganda. Schools for Schools uses grass roots principles in order to engage community involvement on all decisions concerning how funds are spent at each school.

9. The battle with the LRA continues to spread beyond northern Uganda. The United Nations recently reported that the LRA has killed more than 1,200 people and abducted approximately 1,500 children from the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2009 alone. In June, Invisible Children unleashed an army of voices on Capitol Hill to gain the support of the United States legislature in continuing to pressure the global community to address the international crisis created by the LRA. Dozens of legislators have signed the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act voicing their support in recognizing the moral responsibility the current administration has in helping put an end to this war.

10. Invisible Children’s growth and success relies on the grassroots involvement of those who back their cause. If you want to get involved, you can start by watching the film and educating yourself about the war in Uganda.

Photo by laurenatclemson, flickr.