Megan Green is the supporter engagement manager for Invisible Children, an organization that began after three filmmakers discovered the horrors taking place in Uganda, where the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) had been (and continues to) abducting children and turning them into soldiers.
MG: Thanks again for your interest in Invisible Children.
SBB: Please tell us about the Invisible Children Mission Statement.
MG: Invisible Children exists to bring a permanent end to LRA violence and support the recovery of affected communities.
SBB: How long has Invisible Children been in existence?
MG: Invisible Children was founded in 2004.
SBB: What are Invisible Children’s goals and what is being accomplished?
MG: Invisible Children’s overarching goal is to permanently end the violence of the Lord’s Resistance Army in central Africa and to ensure that communities and individuals affected by the LRA are able to fully recover and to thrive.
This goal is being accomplished through the implementation of our various programs including:
The Early Warning Network: a network of high-frequency radios in communities across central Africa which connects otherwise isolated communities to each other and the outside world, allowing them to protect themselves and each other from and mitigate LRA violence.
The LRA Crisis Tracker: Using data collected primarily through the Early Warning Network, the LRA Crisis Tracker tracks and analyzes LRA activity bringing an unprecedented level of transparency to the insecurity facing communities and provides relevant and timely information to policy-makers and practitioners.
“Come Home” Defection Campaigns: distributed through FM and shortwave radio, helicopter speaker messages, printed defection fliers, and peaceful community-based outreach, messages break down the psychological barriers preventing LRA fighters—who are primarily abducted child soldiers—from laying down their weapons and coming home.
SBB: And you have a committee system?
MG: Community Defection Committees are to complement and maximize the impact of “Come Home” messaging. Invisible Children works closely with community partners to educate LRA-affected communities about the importance of supporting peaceful LRA defections.
Invisible Children supports community-led efforts that provide tools and resources to communities and individuals facing trauma as a result of LRA violence, which we call Trauma Healing and Community Peacebuilding. We equip communities with the tools to recover from trauma and become agents for peace.
SBB: Who financially supports the LRA?
MG: The LRA is a rebel group, which sustains itself through the exploitation of communities in central Africa. Their sole mission is survival, and that comes at a high cost for the communities in and around which they operate. The LRA is also known to conduct ivory poaching missions in Garamba National Park, during which they slaughter elephants for their ivory tusks, which is used to fund their operations. They are also known to deal in the illicit mineral trade.
SBB: Why don’t people know about this and how can the media help?
MG: People don’t know about the LRA or the communities they terrorize in large part because these areas are so remote. Communities affected by the LRA are literally and figuratively off the map and, before Invisible Children’s Early Warning Network, had no way of communicating the atrocities committed against them to the outside world. The media must continue to prioritize stories of mass atrocities, such as those committed by the LRA, and advocate for continued attention to this region and conflict from general audiences and policymakers.
SBB: What question do you wish people asked more often?
MG: “What can I do to help?”
There are two answers to that question:
- A) Give—support our work protecting communities, rescuing child soldiers, and supporting the recovery of those affected. You can make a donation or sign up to become a monthly donor at com/donate
- B) Advocate—We must ensure that ending LRA violence and supporting peace and stability in central Africa remains a priority for our leaders. You can do that by joining Invisible Children Citizen. All it takes is your email and your voice and we'll keep you in the loop of ways that you can reach out your representatives and ensure that LRA violence comes to an end. Go to com/get-involved/advocate for more info and to sign up.
MG: Thank you Shelley.
SBB: Thank you Megan.
Child Soldiers and Captive Girl War Brides: The Holy War From Hell
Her name, let’s call her Anne. She was 11 years old when she and other children were abducted from their village and dragged into a militia camp in the jungles of the Central African Republic.
At the age of eleven, Anne was taken to and forcibly married to Joseph Kony, the notorious leader and “prophet” of the quasi-religious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
Because of her age, the LRA fighters who kidnapped her at gunpoint could be sure that she was a virgin.
Now, Anne is one of Kony’s 10 or more captive “army wives,” forced into a life of sexual slavery, beatings, endless sexual abuse, forced marches, while under attack from troops of several nations. While death is her constant companion, what she fears more is that Kony will give her as a gift or a bribe to the gun dealers in the southern Sudan. Suicide seems a viable option, and her life expectancy is yesterday.
In her new life, Anne was forced to join Kony’s other wives in cooking, carrying munitions and contraband, and submitting to sexual abuse by a man whose litany of crimes against humanity has made him the most notorious and wanted war criminal in the world.
Her daily routine consists of near-constant movement through remote jungles with ragged units of Kony’s fighters, running from army attacks, trailing gangs of child porters on forced marches of up to 50 miles a day.
Do I have your attention? You’re missing the point. The point is: Does Anne have your attention? And how do we help this Anne and the other about-to-be Annes? And who is Joseph Kony?
Joseph Kony—tyrant, villain, most-wanted person, mass murderer, former altar boy. He was born in 1961 in the village of Odek, Uganda, where he lived with his Acholi family.
The Acholis are an ethnic group that is mostly Catholic or Protestant and sometimes also have the same beliefs as Islam. Parts of the ancient religion of the region, like a familiar spirit or ancestral worship, also remained.
Kony founded the LRA at the age of 26 and began terrorizing Uganda and the surrounding countries.
He has been seen preceded by men in robes sprinkling holy water. He cites the Bible as his justification for killing witches, for killing those who farm or eat pigs, and for killing simply because God did the same with Noah’s flood and Sodom and Gomorrah.
Francis Ongom, a former LRA officer who defected, was quoted in The Guardian saying, by “2015 Kony’s forces had been responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 people and the kidnapping of at least 60,000 children. Various atrocities committed include raping young girls and abducting them for use as sex slaves.”
Kony neither inspires nor represents anyone. He plunders all. He rules by murder, rape, and plunder. When he murders, he kills a body. When he rapes a female child, he kills her innocence. Child rape is a spiritual crime on the human soul and an assault upon the human spirit. By mutilating one girl’s innocence, he attacks our belief in our moral ability to stand upright amongst ourselves and all our fellow creatures.
We grow by our respect for life, we honor life by our ability to protect the vulnerable, and we evolve, either as a person or a species, by nourishing our innocence into spiritual growth and ongoing expectations of momentary joy. We exist to survive, but we also live to secure and share the love of the unthreatened moment. And within that moment of peace, there is the spirit enriched.
Shelley B. Blank has worked with major national and international newspapers as a journalist as well as a corporate executive. He has produced programs for Public Radio and lectured on modern multimedia communications and technology.
