Aurora teens take up fight of child soldiers in Uganda
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| In the West Aurora High School cafeteria (from right) sophomore Amanda Mikuski, junior Lindsey Plata and senior Emma Sarbu sell bracelets to help raise money for the people of Sudan and Uganda, while the documentary "Invisible Children" plays to their left in Aurora Monday morning. West Senior Emma Sarbu organized the week-long sale of the bracelets after watching "invisible Children" in the school's modern history class taught by Joe S |
AURORA Posters of young children, their faces pictures of sadness and tragedy, decorated the walls at West Aurora High School.
Above the drinking fountain in a hallway, one sign read: "No child should look like this," as an arrow pointed to a youngster draped in army fatigues, clutching a rifle, wearing a helmet and a painstaking frown.
Another said, "Don't ignore them because you don't see them."
One more: "The victims are not nameless."
The posters represent a hefty project spearheaded by West High senior Emma Sarbu, who was anchored by a driving force of about 120 of her peers in Joe Sustersic's modern history classes.
Dubbed "Invisible Children," the teens' swiftly-organized fundraiser was spawned from a documentary produced by three filmmakers from Southern California, who flew to Africa
in search of a story that would change the world. What they found was a situation in Northern Uganda that both disgusted and inspired them. They discovered an ongoing, 20-year war where children are the weapons and the victims 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds abducted and forced to fight with the rebel army as child soldiers.
Upon seeing the documentary, at the insistence of her college-aged brother who was home on break, Sarbu took immediate action. Just as quickly, she had eager followers.
"There was a tremendous effort put forth by tons of kids," Sarbu said. "They had a huge vision and worked so hard to make it successful."
Students designed posters, preached awareness and made bracelets that they sold for $1 apiece during a recent lunch hour in West's cafeteria.
Soon, Sarbu will send the $1,531 she and her group raised to the non-profit Invisible Children Inc., and the money will be funneled to Uganda to help soften the lives of the students'
faraway peers.
They'll never meet them.
But they sure know them.
"The rebel army has no volunteers; they abduct child soldiers and force them to fight in the bush," Sarbu said. "The children get desensitized immediately. (Adult soldiers) will kill a child in front of (other kids), brutally murder them, and the children are told: 'If you don't fight with us, this is what we'll do to you.'
"The children are so psychologically traumatized, and that's an image that stays with you."
Students involved with the project volunteered their time, skipped their lunches, to sell bracelets and raise money. They worked like vendors at a ballgame, stopping table-to-table, and their classmates responded, as proven by the final tally.
"I feel like this makes me a better person," junior Lindsey Plata, another organizer of the project, said. "I never actually realized exactly how many people are dying. It really opens my eyes that people struggle
around the world."
To Jan Egeland, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, international organizations are blind to the situation in Uganda. However, amateur filmmakers and student-driven groups such as the one at West High did not hesitate to extend their reach.
"It's a moral outrage to see thousands of children that have been abducted, that have been maltreated," Egeland said. "They are going through the most horrendous torture by the rebel movement and that same group is now being neglected by the whole international community. I cannot find any other part of the world having an emergency on the scale of Uganda with so little international attention."
Sustersic said some of his students get disgruntled when Mom takes away their cell phone. Or that the $80 pair of jeans aren't in this month's budget. Suburban school kids are often faced with the option of cheeseburger, pizza or combo. But certainly not given the choice of
dying by rifle, machine gun or bayonet.
The documentary and ensuing fundraiser changed attitudes, to be sure.
"What the kids are realizing is that their worst day is what most kids around the world would take as their best day ever," Sustersic said. "Our kids are realizing the luxuries that they have."
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05/22/06
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