Arts & Culture
Students signing up for Invisible Children programs.
Invisible Children provides a voice for Uganda
The Pointer
nmeye@uwsp.edu
During her sophomore year of high school, something changed for University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point freshman Liz Colianni. A group of representatives for the group Invisible Children came to her high school discussing a war in Uganda that forces children to fight. After this, she would go on to meet a nun from Northern Uganda who had witnessed the atrocities first hand. From there, she knew she had to do more.
“She told me to keep pressing on, even if I was the last one to keep fighting,” said Colianni, “I knew I had to get really involved.”
Colianni has since joined with the UWSP chapter of Invisible Children, which held its first event of the year on Tuesday evening at the Encore, in the Dreyfus University Center. The group, with the help of some of the national organizations roadies, screened a film entitled “Together We are Free,” a film documenting some of the action Invisible Children has taken as an organization, specifically an event called the “The Rescue.”
The Rescue was an attempt by the organization in April 2009 to bring people together in a big way and get big names involved with their cause. People gathered in 100 cities across the globe and declared themselves “abducted” and waited outside for someone of influence to “save” them. Some waited for days for what they called a “mogul,” meaning a celebrity or politician to recognize the cause. Club President Doug Peterson attended the event.
“In Chicago I spent three or four days on the streets freezing not able to shower,” Peterson said, “I would do it again in a heart beat.”
For 23 years, Northern Uganda has been in the depths of civil war. Since the beginning of the war in 1987 the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda have failed in finding a way for peace to resume. The leader of the LRA, Joseph Kony, resorted to stealing children from villages and training them to be a part of his army, keeping his cause alive. Its estimated that 90% of the LRA is now made up of abducted children according to the Invisible Children web site.
These children and this war went unnoticed for almost 20 years until Invisible Children was started by a group of film school graduates in 2003. Now with Invisible Children chapters starting all over America, the lost children of Uganda have a voice.
“We just want to let people know the story and help Uganda get back to having a stable economy and not living in fear,” said Peterson.
The national organization has many ways people can help, and the UWSP chapter hopes that their ambition will bring other people to the cause.
“We’re just looking to grow because we have huge expectations for our group. We’re trying to get Taylor Swift for a benefit concert in the spring,” said Peterson.
Invisible Children has many programs to provide aid to Uganda. A teacher exchange, Visible Children Scholarship, Tri campaign, Schools for Schools campaign and a bracelet campaign bring in money for a variety of needs for people in the middle of war.
The UWSP chapter will be involved with at least one of those campaigns this year, Schools for Schools. The program partners the group with a school in Uganda for which they raise money. All of the money they raise goes directly to improving the school in Uganda.
The main goal of the UWSP chapter is simply to get more people involved in programs like this, even if they don’t decide to join the group and help every week.
“It’s not about joining the organization. It’s about stopping a war and arresting Joseph Kony,” said Colianni.
The UWSP chapter meets every Tuesday in room 378 of the DUC at 7 p.m. For more information visit www.invisiblechildren.com.
