KONY 2012: What Uganda do about it?

Four days ago, barely anyone had an idea what KONY 2012 was let alone who Joseph Kony is, and just how nefarious his actions are. I am no exception to that statement. Seeing a request on Facebook to join the cause was my initial introduction to this noble cause. Thus, a new day paved the path for the global emergence of Innocent Children, an organization dedicated to eradicating Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), in their mission to bring justice to Uganda. The charitable foundation has even released a brand new 30 minute video in which they shed light onto the remotely known grave issues that have been plaguing Uganda for over two decades. Invisible Children is led by an activist group of individuals determined to bring about reformative change into Uganda through social action as well as creative film. It appears that they are almost determined to bring a rapid end to this treachery through word of mouth, in hopes that somehow that enough inspired college students will be enough to make things right. In spite of their ambitious goals, Invisible Children Uganda (ICU) leaves a lot to be desired in terms of how they are allocating their resources, and just how they are trying to bring resolution to this world impacting matter. 

Awareness of something just means knowing it exists. Awareness groups do nothing but waste money when it comes to causes that everybody is already aware of. Everybody already knows that dictators, child soldiers, famine, etc. exists in Africa, just like everybody already knows that cancer exists. Awareness groups take much needed funding away from groups that actually do things to help the people being affected by these problems. People who support these groups absolutely have their heart in the right place, but almost never do research to see what their money is actually being used for. They just assume that all of the money will go directly to help the people (and in the case of disease, research) the cause is “raising” awareness for, but instead they just use that money to pay their own salaries and operating costs (which is reasonable) and use what is left over to start a new campaign and raise more awareness, which is absolutely pointless if everyone is already aware of the problem. Additionally, Invisible Children Uganda fails to address the issue that Joseph Kony has not had his presence known in Northern Uganda for over 5 years now. Also,  ICU has repeatedly supported the Ugandan Army over the years, even though they are as guilty of looting and raping women as Kony himself. The point being, as crucial as it is to capture Kony, it is wrong to support a hypocrite country, which requires considerable reformative action before it will be able to truly function on its own. 

In order to properly understand the nature of Invisible Children it is important to delve in deeper than just skimming the bare layer of the "About" tab on their website. Thus, it is imperative to take a look at their finances, which have been made public. Of the $8.9 million spent by them in 2011, only about $2.8 million (32%) went directly to charity. The rest of the finances were allocated to paying $1.7 million in salaries, $1.07 million in travel expenses, and $850,000 in Production costs. Such a dispersion is not what a charity should stand for. It does not matter how many "action kits" they may be able to shove down the throats of liberal college kids trying to make a difference. In the end, Joseph Kony will still be at large. If 100 trained American soldiers cannot train the Ugandan army to capture him, then surely the parading around of youth will not make any significant impact. I implore you to think before supporting this organization. At the very least, please know where Uganda is on the map.