KONY 2012

 - THIS IS NOT MY VIDEO -

Before you read this blog entry, please check out the video above. The idea of this campaign is to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise enough awareness for his arrest. He has no agenda for his war, and seeks only to make himself more powerful. He kidnaps children, turns the young women into sex slaves and makes the boys fight for his army.

Over the last few years, the governments of the western world have fought against and destroyed the empires of Sadam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and more recently Colonel Gadaffi, because of the threats that they posed to the entire world. However, Joseph Kony has remained under the radar because his efforts are of no concern to anyone outside Africa.

That's where the public has stepped in.

We have seen the power of social networking before. Groups on Facebook brought people together to start the riots in Egypt, which led to the eventual downfall of Colonel Gadaffi. And for the last 8 years, the group Invisible Children have been gathering as much information as they can, and campaigning to the American government to step in. However, it was only in October of 2011 that Obama sent a small group of soldiers into Uganda to help stop Kony.

This year the Invisible Children group have put together this half-hour documentary and are willing people to share it in any way they can. Thousands of people on YouTube, Vimeo and other streaming sites have shared this video on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. There are more people on Facebook now than there were people on Earth 200 years ago, and this campaign is using that to their full advantage. What's more promising is that this video was posted two days ago (05/03/2012) and has already had an overwhelming response.

Slowly but surely, Joseph Kony is making himself a household name because of social networking. Proving that today, it does not take one man in a government to make a difference to the world, it is now the people who are making the changes. Everyday social networking makes the world more and more democratic, because it gives people the opportunity to have a voice.

So sign the pledge that this video talks about, buy the action kit and donate money to the cause.

Don't let me try and sway you though. All the convincing I needed was in that video.

People have been sceptical about the funding of the Invisible Children organisation. It's a non-profit organisation, but a lot of the money goes towards their advertising campaigns, and doesn't go towards the actual arrest of Kony. Oh. Guess what, dickends, their campaign wouldn't have been nearly as good if that documentary wasn't as amazing and powerful as it is. I don't care how they spend their money, so long as the end result is the correct one. One Kony has been arrested, the funding of the Ugandan army will probably cease, but until that time we've got to do everything in our power to stop this awful, awful man.

It's not the money we should be caring about. It's the freedom of those kids.

Reference: The KONY 2012 video on YouTube. http://youtu.be/Y4MnpzG5Sqc

HOW TO HELP:
Join TRI or Donate to Invisible Children: http://bit.ly/yp5Ffv
Purchase KONY 2012 products: http://invisiblechildrenstore.myshopify.com/
Sign the Pledge: http://www.causes.com/causes/227-invisible-children

Thank you.

Pete out.