What are you doing today...

helping to end a 20 year war perhaps?

A little while back I wrote that there have been no significant social actions (significant in the context of the Internets reach to over 1 billion uses) empowered by the use of the Internet. I may have been wrong. Invisible Children is an organisation with an amazing mission –to end a 20 year war. Three young guys have made a documentary chronicling the Ugandan civil war and the stories of the children who have to flee their villages every night and walk to safe compounds in the city to escape being made into child soldiers or sex slaves. They, and a group of impassioned volunteers, have harnessed the reach of MySpace, Youtube and other youth-centric sites to attract and inspire American youth to believe that they can have a real and lasting affect in changing the world. As clichéd as this may unfortunately have become saving the world is not just for beauty queens.

Please do me the favour of checking out their site. This is an inspirational example of how utilising the Internet in conjunction with old fashioned telephone and footpath-bashing campaigning can effect change. I don’t know what the outcome of this cause will be, but my hope is that instances like this will herald a new wave of effective social action.