Invisible Children

This weekend we went up for a visit to Gulu. Gulu is located in Northern Uganda and is infamous for being in the middle of a war-torn region. Gulu isn’t a tourist destination. In fact, our East Africa Tour Book, gives one paragraph description that states, in no uncertain terms, that there is no reason for a visit or even a friendly drive-thru. The town is teeming with NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organizations) that are there to provide basic services to millions of people that live in IDP Camps (Internally Displaced Person Camps). These camps are basically shanty’s smaller than your personal bedroom at home, but they house entire families. People arrive to these IDP Camps, hoping to escape the violence and find safety in numbers, but, new problems arise. Millions who once relied on the land to provide for their families have been relocated to IDP camps where they must depend on insufficient rations from international aid. There is no infrastructure, no systems or processes, no leaderships, no laws. So how do you educate all those kids? How do feed all those people, who have left their crops behind? Water and Sanitation become big issues, as disease spreads quickly among people living in such close quarters. Therefore, access to clean water, economic opportunities, health centers, and education are a pressing concern in these people’s daily life. So, we went to Gulu, in order to see first hand what these different NGO’s were doing to meet these many pressing needs within the IDP Camps.

We specifically visited the offices of Invisible Children to learn about their different initiatives. In 2005, to help provide economic opportunities for these individuals, Invisible Children began The Bracelet Campaign. This is an initiative that simultaneously provides jobs in the displaced community, while raising awareness around the world. Each bracelet represents a reach child’s journey through this war and represents a particular need that they to bring awareness to the West. The profit from the sell of these Bracelets funds all their education initiatives. Therefore, enough people (primarily Americans) by purchasing a simple bracelet for $20 have helped to employ 180 people in the camps and send 662 number of people to Secondary school. We met plenty of other great people (mostly young Americans like myself) who are working to provide education and to thousands of people. We also drove by the United Nations World Food Program, which is basically a score of large rectangle buildings that warehouse enough food to help feed the hundreds of thousands of people currently still living in the IDP Camps in Northern Uganda.