It started with a few people, that developed into a group of people, which then grew into an organisation. Now, it’s a purpose. To try. To help.
Finally, we have been given an answer to that question that at some point we have all asked ourselves, what difference can I really make?
The Invisible Children cause shows us just how individual actions can snowball to become a big difference. The cause is asking each and every single person on the planet to help by spreading awareness of Joseph Kony, one of the world’s worst war criminals.
With their plan to make him infamous, they have targeted 20 celebrity faces including Lady Gaga, George Clooney, Jay Z and Oprah to help encourage support. With the movement trending, tweets from Rihanna and the rest of the world bursting from Twitter and the Invisible Children video filling Facebook newsfeeds, it seems the plan is working.
April 20th 2012 will see a night in which posters and flyers will pepper the streets of cities across the UK. Using Facebook to create different groups and events for the different cities, the cause is encouraging everyone to stay up during the night to ensure that on the morning of 21st April, the world wakes up to Joseph Kony’s name, his face and why he must be stopped.
In the video made by Jason Russell he states, ‘right now, there are more people on Facebook than there were on the planet 200 years ago.’ And so we must use this new cyber world to assist the Invisible Children cause. Now is the time to use all those hours that you spend procrastinating on Facebook instead of doing your coursework to do something useful and help shape the future by raising awareness of Kony.
This will, and has been met by criticism with the argument that Facebook and Twitter cannot stop war crimes, but I’m not sure when anyone stated that Facebook and Twitter are putting on their army gear and stopping Kony themselves. It’s people that empower these websites, and it is people that can make a difference. What is the other option, do nothing? Does not clicking ‘share’ or ‘retweet’ do anything better? What is the harm in making a few more people that little bit more aware of an issue taking place in our world? In the same way that those running in this very LUSU election urge us to spread word of their name on Facebook, because every single vote counts for them, this movement asks us to spread awareness for them because they believe that every person makes a difference. Why not hang on to hope that it can? Why not try? What good is it to stand by and simply declare they will fail? No one has stated that these social networking sites are the solution.
In 20 years time, when someone talks about this, or if our children are taught about him at school, don’t you want to be able to say that you helped bring attention to the cause that eventually brought him to justice? Of course, these social networking sites are not the solution. But they’re the start.
If you haven’t watched the video… http://www.invisiblechildren.com/videos
