I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while but didn’t really have an urgent reason to until this last week. I want to tell you about the San Diego-based non-profit Invisible Children. This organization has held a special place in my heart for quite some time. When I lived in San Diego, I volunteered whenever I could and became good friends with many of the people who worked (and still work) for them.
Their story goes a little something like this:
In the spring of 2003, three young filmmakers (Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole) traveled to Africa in search of a story. What started out as a film making adventure transformed into much more when these boys from San Diego discovered the untold tragedy of Uganda. Rebel armies, known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), have been abducting children and using them as troops while they wage war against the Ugandan government. This originally caused the children to night commute, or walk miles nightly to avoid these troops. It is estimated that 90% of the LRA are abducted children. The film tells their story. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend that you do. I don’t say this often about cinema, but I swear to you that the film changed my life. You can get it here.
Once the documentary was cut in 2004, they started screening it at local universities, starting with University of San Diego, UCSD and SDSU but the film has now been seen by millions of people. The overwhelming response has been, “How can I help?” To answer this question, the 501(c)3 non-profit Invisible Children, Inc. was created, giving compassionate individuals an effective way to respond to the situation.
Over the last few years the story of Invisible Children sparked a grassroots movement mobilizing thousands of American teens into action to raise money to rebuild war-torn schools in northern Uganda and provide scholarships to African youth. Through events like the Global Night Commute and Displace Me, millions of young people around the globe became voices for the voiceless in northern Uganda. The IC network and support base was expanding at an incredible rate.
Invisible Children has always been the best at creative social media and viral marketing. They use film to inspire people into action. Take a look at one of these next few videos and if you don’t get the chills, you might want to check your pulse.
The TRI Campaign.
The Rescue (a protest) aftermath
So let me get to the real reason that I’m writing this.
Facebook recently teamed up with JP Morgan Chase to distribute more than $5 million across its network of nonprofit organizations. Based on the votes of Facebook users, the partnership would donate $1 million to the winning nonprofit, $100,000 each to the five runners up, and $25,000 each to the next 100 finalists. That may seem like everyone gets a piece of the pie, but all of Facebook’s registered charities, totaling more than 500,000, are eligible to win.
The program is called Chase Community Giving: You Decide What Matters. The top 100 charities were announced on December 15 (Invisible Children being one of them), another round of voting commenced from January 15 to January 29. The five runners up and $1 million grand prize winner was announced on February 1.
Two days before the voting ended, IC was in 2nd place, behind To Write Love On Her Arms, an awesome organization dedicated to the prevention of teenage depression. And they weren’t behind by a small margin, they were in second place with about 11,000 votes between the two. IC had to breach that within two days and voting had been open for weeks. They did. And within the last day of the race, they actually ended up pulling ahead by 11,000 votes. But watch below and see how small the margin actually was for the win.
Here’s to changing the world one film at a time.
