The Invisible Children Club at Center High started in the 2006-2007 school year, created by Jessica Baltzley. In that school year Jessica organized the club to go to San Francisco to participate in Displace Me, she had the group make and sell IC memorabilia and she organized for the IC Roadies to come to the Theatre to put on an assemble for the student body. When she graduated, the club was passes onto the hands of Alanna Gilbert where she is now recruiting and planning new fund raisers and activities. Our mission is to spread awareness to the students and community and to raise funds to send to the official Invisible Children organization to help Ugandans directly.
Invisible Children Inc., established in 2004, is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing financial resources to invisible children by documenting their true, untold stories in a creative and relevant way, resulting in positive change. Invisible Children Inc. was formed after the release of the film Invisible Children: Rough Cut, which documents a war in Northern Uganda in which children are abducted by a rebel army and forced to fight as child soldiers. The filmmakers for Invisible Children: Rough Cut, Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole, are also the founders of Invisible Children Inc. Currently Invisible Children Inc. employs over 150 people in the war-torn area of Northern Uganda and is putting 300 kids through school, with plans to see that number grow into the thousands. The organization is based in San Diego, California.
AND WHY THIS CLUB IS SO IMPORTANT..
For the past 20 years, the people of northern Uganda have been caught in the midst of a war between the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda. More than 1.7 million people are displaced and forced to live in squalid internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.
More than 30,000 children have been taken from their homes and abducted by the LRA, often
brainwashed and coerced to become soldiers and sex slaves. As many as 35,000 children are forced to walk from their rural homes to sleep in town centers to avoid violence and abduction. Known as “night commuters,†they remain extremely vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Amidst LRA terror, the Ugandan government has not put forth the necessary resources or political will to end the war, causing many abducted children to be killed.
Our Goals:
1) First, exposing the effects of a 20-year-long war on the children of Northern Uganda by telling their stories in a relevant way.
2) Secondly, empowering the individual viewer towards action.
(volunteering, fundraising, concerts, donations, the bracelet campaign, political pressure, etc)
3) Finally, providing aid to the “invisible children†on the ground in Uganda.
