Bringing light to the Invisible Children

For the past 23 years, there has been an extremely violent war raging across four countries in central Africa. But the most disturbing thing; the rest of the world is just taking interest in it now. Nearly two million people have been caught in the middle of this sickening conflict. This war is being fought mainly between the Government of Uganda, and the Lord's Resistance Army, or the LRA. The LRA began around the 1980's, under the leadership of a woman named Alice Lakwena. Lakwena began this movement because she believed that she was spoken to by the Holy Spirit, and she believed that it told her she needed to rise against and over throw the Ugandan government for being unjust to the Acholi people. This movement turned to be unsuccessful, and when Lakwena was exiled, the LRA started to lose power and motivation. This is when Joseph Kony stepped in, and this is also when the LRA's actions began to get much more sickening. After being defeated by the Ugandan government, the Acholi people started to lose faith in the LRA and support dwindled. The LRA, realizing this thought of a very simple way to refill their ranks: start abducting children. Over 90% of the LRA is compromised of children, many as young as nine years old.They come during the night, abducting the children and killing their parents. This has orphaned many children, who now flock across central Africa for safety in refugee camps, only to find more poverty, starvation, and despair. They force the kids to kill, or be killed themselves. To keep them from running away, the kids are tortured and maimed.

This terrible story has been kept in the dark for almost two decades now, until the work of three young men came to change everything. Three young kids from Southern California went to Africa in search of a story to film; instead they found a truely disturbing story. Since then they have made it their mission to end this horrible war, by using film. They have formed a not-for-profit organization that travels across the country, gathering millions under its banner, to go out and spread the stories of the Invisible Children and make them more aware to the entire community. They have also raised millions of dollars to help create radio towers to warn of LRA movements and locations to protect the children. This is their website: http://www.invisiblechildren.com/homepage