Who can name to me the wars going on in the world right now? Ready.. set... name. I'm going to guess the first thing you said was the War on Terror, where we in the States are fighting in Afghanistan. You may have mentioned Libya, Somalia, Egypt, the Arab States, Israel, Palestine, or others, if you read the news. If you're on the internet a lot, you may have mentioned the "War on Kony", which currently seems to be a stalemate. And if you are in the know, you'll mention the Korean War, which, despite popular belief, is still going on; it is one of the only places in the world where the Cold War still exists. But how many of you mentioned the Second Congo War, the "Great War of Africa", the deadliest war in the world? I would hope all of you. Sadly, this is not the case. This war, despite the deaths of over six million Congolese since the war began 14 years ago, is not popularized or often reported by the media. Yesterday morning, however, my respect for actor Ryan Gosling grew immensely as he and Enough Project co-founder John Prendergast posted about it on the Huffington Post website (which usually I do not frequent, but had to for this article.)
Their joint-authored article is short but concise, telling their readers to go check out the new "I Am Congo" video on the Raise Hope for Congo website.
I'm not here to just advertise for them, however. I'd like to tell you my take on the war. It's like the "Kony" thing we heard, except blown up, happening on such a larger scale. This country is wracked with horrors such as rapes, murders, terrors, and basically, pillaging of the entire Democratic Republic of Congo. And nobody reports about it. Nobody. Apparently our current favorite celebrities' outfits on the latest movie premiere's red carpet is more important than the lives of millions of people. Yes, you read right. We read more about celebrity gossip than we do about the deaths of millions of people. Think of the deaths of our superstars. We give them so much more respect than we give to our servicemen and servicewomen, and we pay so many more times attention to one celebrity life than a million Congolese deaths. If the word ignorant burned it's way to the front of your mind, that's okay, it did to mine too.
We need to raise awareness about this SILENT WAR going on in the Congo. Nobody is making a "Congo 2012" video. WE are the change we need to see in the world. WE must be the ones to raise awareness, not a 15-minutes-in-the-spotlight video. WE must help the voices of the Congolese be heard. Only we can do it.
Showing posts with label awareness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label awareness. Show all posts
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Should We Be Making Kony Famous?
Kony 2012. Make Kony Famous. Last week, all our emotions were aroused with a persuasive, pathos-ridden video convincing us to take a war criminal out of the world. Great idea, right?! We should give all our savings to Invisible Children to stop this man with his army of 30,000 innocent children! Well, yes, that would be great, if the things presented in the video were not skewed to confuse us and toy with our emotions. Now, don't get me wrong, I am so glad my generation is finally becoming more aware of the world around us, I just don't think we should be following a movement like lemmings just because we watched a video with inspiring music. I believe we should do our research before we jump headfirst into something.
First of all, we should be looking into the organization called Invisible Children who put out this video. You can look up charities & see how much money they actually give to their cause, the best are those with a 10% overhead and 90% of their funds go to the cause. With Invisible Children, however, only 30% goes to Uganda. This is partly because they spend a lot on raising awareness & travel to Africa, but a lot also goes to the individuals on the board of Invisible Children. There are better charities for the same (or very similar) cause. Also, we should be looking into the statistics on Kony himself. Yes, Joseph Kony is a horrible, cold-hearted man. He lies to the world, saying he is fighting for a "Christian cause", when, in fact, he is a witch doctor. He kills thousands, also true. But does he have an army of 30,000 innocent children ready to charge and take control of the world? No. That is an estimated total of those children who have been in his army in the last 26 years. It's definitely still horrible, but didn't Invisible Children's video manipulate you to think there were 30,000 in his army right now? They did for me, when I first watched the video. This leads into my tertiary point, which is the manipulation of our emotions by Invisible Children through this video. Truth is, the pathos (emotional pleas) and inspirational music in the video were pointed at our generation because the charity knows how they can manipulate our emotions. Yes, Kony needs to be dealt with. Of course he does. However, Joseph Kony has been in hiding since 2006! The video didn't say anything about this. WE must stop this man, yes, but, for the moment, he has stopped.
My point here is, we should look into things before we allow ourselves to buy into them , At the heart of this movement is a huge gold nugget, despite the truth-twisting in the video. This gold nugget, worth so much to the world, is the new found awareness and good intentions of my generation, which, before this movement, had little to no interest in the problems of the world. Now that a seed of awareness has been planted in their hearts, I have high hopes that my generation will open their eyes to the world around them.
First of all, we should be looking into the organization called Invisible Children who put out this video. You can look up charities & see how much money they actually give to their cause, the best are those with a 10% overhead and 90% of their funds go to the cause. With Invisible Children, however, only 30% goes to Uganda. This is partly because they spend a lot on raising awareness & travel to Africa, but a lot also goes to the individuals on the board of Invisible Children. There are better charities for the same (or very similar) cause. Also, we should be looking into the statistics on Kony himself. Yes, Joseph Kony is a horrible, cold-hearted man. He lies to the world, saying he is fighting for a "Christian cause", when, in fact, he is a witch doctor. He kills thousands, also true. But does he have an army of 30,000 innocent children ready to charge and take control of the world? No. That is an estimated total of those children who have been in his army in the last 26 years. It's definitely still horrible, but didn't Invisible Children's video manipulate you to think there were 30,000 in his army right now? They did for me, when I first watched the video. This leads into my tertiary point, which is the manipulation of our emotions by Invisible Children through this video. Truth is, the pathos (emotional pleas) and inspirational music in the video were pointed at our generation because the charity knows how they can manipulate our emotions. Yes, Kony needs to be dealt with. Of course he does. However, Joseph Kony has been in hiding since 2006! The video didn't say anything about this. WE must stop this man, yes, but, for the moment, he has stopped.
My point here is, we should look into things before we allow ourselves to buy into them , At the heart of this movement is a huge gold nugget, despite the truth-twisting in the video. This gold nugget, worth so much to the world, is the new found awareness and good intentions of my generation, which, before this movement, had little to no interest in the problems of the world. Now that a seed of awareness has been planted in their hearts, I have high hopes that my generation will open their eyes to the world around them.
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