Students raise awareness for the invisible children of Uganda.

Students gather on a small tarp at assembly to illustrate the cramped areas that Ugandan children are forced to live in.

Four sophomore girls from The College Preparatory School launched Uganda Awareness Week on Monday, March 20, 2006.  After attending the Youth Philanthropy Worldwide conference earlier this spring, the four students learned about children, aged 5-12 years old, who are kidnapped into the Lord Resistance Agency (LRA) to fight the war in Uganda. They are forced to kill, and those that escape into refugee camps are permitted to hide from the conflict for only 45 days before they are forced back into the terrors of Uganda. The CPS students feel passionately about the forgotten crisis in Uganda and are working on a program to bring attention to the cause on campus, fundraise and write to the US and Ugandan government representatives to plea for action to protect these children.

The Uganda Awareness Week began with a mock kidnapping, with six students pulled from their class, blindfolded and bound and taken to assembly where information on Uganda was presented to the other CPS students. Each student represented 5,000 children that have been abducted (30,000). This illustration allowed the students to experience, just for a moment, the fear of being driven from what they consider a safe environment like schools, hospitals or public spaces. Mid week fifteen students gather on a small tarp at assembly to illustrate the cramped areas that Ugandan children are forced to live in.  The week concludes with a screening of Invisible Children by filmmakers Bobby Bailey, Jason Russell and Laren Poole on the exploitation of the nation's children.

For more information:
http://www.invisiblechildren.com
http://www.ypworldwide.org