Well, technically it’s the Fall Out Boy “Me & You” music video. For more information on our involvement with FOB, check out the original post from a few months ago, when the video first premiered.
Now that it’s out there, we need your help getting it seen. After climbing to #8, it jumped to #6 within a week! With your help, we know it can become #1. (more…)
It was two years ago when my feet first touched Ugandan soil. The feeling was strange and at the same time oddly familiar.
In August of 2005, I traveled to Uganda with three of my best friends expecting to photograph 100 high school students who would receive full-ride scholarships and full-time Ugandan mentors from Invisible Children, but my three-week trip was exchanged for something unexpected, adventurous, and life altering.
Just before my departure date Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole asked me and my best friend to stay in Uganda for six months to structure Invisible Children’s scholarship program. My mind screamed, “I’ll do it,” but I had no idea what I was getting into. I found myself thinking, “What’s a mentor? What are school fees? Is this even possible?”
Within a month, our Country Director, Jolly Okot, and the first four mentors, Geoffrey Howard, Ojara Geoffrey Ojiri, Okello Quinto, and Topaco Betty, were hired. Our mission was to select 100 vulnerable students from a pile of 300 applications that included child mothers, child heads of households, AIDS orphans, returnees, former child soldiers, and children who were HIV positive…but how do you select 100 scholarship candidates from 300 applicants when all of them need scholarships and a mentor?
First, you don’t enjoy it and you struggle emotionally. Second, you give priority to the first applicants. Third, a mentor visits their homes and performs a background check. Fourth, you select students that are excelling academically. Finally, you trust that the source of financial support, the youth of America, cares enough to do whatever it takes to give the youth of northern Uganda what they want and need the most – education.
Seen here are the first students who were selected to be in the scholarship program.
2008’s Lobby Day for northern Uganda is happening in D.C. the weekend of February 24th and Invisible Children is counting on you to be there!
IC is working with Resolve Uganda to raise awareness in Washington for this crisis in Uganda. A full website will be going up after the holidays. Until then, we have all the information you need. Download this file for a full overview of what Resolve Uganda’s Lobby Day is all about. (more…)
Foxboro Regional Charter School students are reaching far beyond New England to help other students in Uganda.
“As a country, we don’t really pay attention to wars in other countries like Africa, but this makes us see the war,” senior Kayla Pina said. “I think on even wider terms, it is great to see teens involved in something and it’s great to see those of us who are younger who might not have as much clout as say, a senator, making a difference.” (more…)
Airing randomly throughout the next week, Current TV’s pod on Displace Me shows what it was like to make a difference on the war in Uganda. (more…)
As 16 presidents, 20 prime ministers and 12 delegates from the 53-member Commonwealth leave, no mention of the civil war was discussed.
“The key thing is that [the Commonwealth leaders] do two things: convey privately to President Museveni their strong views to ending the war and bring justice to the victims,” said Richard Dicker, director of international justice programs at Human Rights Watch in New York. (more…)
Take a look at Invisible Children’s new Holiday Campaign: (more…)
Despite dealing with non-profit protocol, Palmetto Senior High is helping make a difference through creative ideas and persistent compassion.
Unfortunately, this ICU club cannot collect money because they have to fill out the 501(c)3 in order to prove that they are a non-profit organization. The application process can take up to six months. (more…)
It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m sitting on the ground laughing as I try to focus my camera amidst clouds of flying dust. I can feel my stomach move to the pulse of the drum next to me and I’m completely surrounded by dancing children. I recently read a quote by Ruth St. Denis that described dancing “as communication between body and soul to express what is too deep to find for words.” Nowhere is this more true than in northern Uganda. Despite the devastating effect this war has had on Acholi culture, people have found a way to keep their traditions alive – passing on the art of dancing and drumming to younger generations.
Every weekend in Gulu, children of all ages come together to learn and practice traditional Acholi dances at a non-profit play therapy center called HEALS (Health, Education, Arts, Literacy and Sports). This organization gives formal and civic education to vulnerable children through art and play therapy, but one of their main activities is teaching children traditional dancing and drumming. The vision behind their activities is cultural education. Dance and music are a paramount way the Acholi people express themselves and celebrate the life of the community. HEALS’s activities seek to ensure that the children of Gulu don’t forget this important cultural rite.
Thirty LRA members including 16 fighters who defected days ago have surrendered to UN peacekeepers in DR Congo. The group, led by Sunday Otto Achaya, once a member of Joseph Kony’s protection unit repotedly spent most of last week lost in the Garamba Game Park. That mass arrest also reportedly left LRA Deputy Commander Vincent Otti under house arrest although rumours are rife he was executed. But Otto may have difficulty getting amnesty because he abused the one granted to him early in 2003.
“The law has been amended, if someone gets amnesty, it only has to be once but there are discussions whether people who come out of the LRA now can be treated as a special group,” said Hajji Ganyana Millo, an Amnesty commissioner in charge of northern Uganda.
