gems of wisdom: KONY2012 and more

Without permission I don't reveal the person who I am quoting, but the message I can attest coming from a trustworthy person who is native to the Continent we explore helping.  I will underline parts in this quote that to me are important, just my thoughts.


"This Kony thing is still very sensitive on the ground. The documentary failed to do one important thing; to involve local leadership and affected community in making this movie. Usually for success of any project, it is important to have the target community involved to generate ownership. If Invisible children did this, it would have been this community now defending them. They decided to do this thing on their own and of course it took the world by surprise and their project is bound to fail. In Uganda today, you can’t show this movie to the public without seeking police clearance because it has generated two opposing sides; those who support it and those against and the danger of fights are likely in areas where they show this movie in Northern Uganda. In Lira for example, some youth blocked showing of the movie.
I don’t want to reason cheap and rubbish the contributions of invisible children in Northern Uganda. I think they have tried to do great work and Joseph Kony 2012 forms part of this. I am extremely so happy today that at least over 70 million people know who Joseph Kony is and what he did in Northern Uganda and now what he is doing in Central Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and some parts of Sudan. The beauty of this is, at least one of the 70 million people is going to stand out to make a difference in rebuilding Northern Uganda and the credit of course goes to Invisible Children for lighting the candle. From the time Kony 2012 went online; I have received a number of inquiries about Joseph Kony from many Americans especially who want make a difference to the community he destroyed.
One important thing I want people to know is that Kony no longer operates in Northern Uganda. His rebel group completely left this region around 2007 and this marked the end of the war. However, despite the region being under recovery and rehabilitation, the effects of this war on our community are enormous. A large part of our community is battling with trauma / psychological effect, absolute poverty, breakdown in education culture, youth unemployment, illiteracy, orphan crisis, disease outbreak, malnutrition and total collapse of social service delivery.
Part of the disappointment of the people of Northern Uganda is that they see a large presence of development agencies trying to solve these problems but they don’t see their impact on the ground. I agree that a majority of donor funding is misused and too much is put into meeting operations costs of these organizations leaving out the intended beneficiary. Invisible Children was attacked by international press about this however, I am happy they came out strong to defend their position.
Yes, Kony 2012 is a good project, embrace it and make a difference!"


So, please keep reading and learning and listening and keeping an open mind.  Just because "some" criticize the efforts that might include elements not totally sound does not mean that we throw up our hands.  That, at least, is the message I got from my Ugandan friend!