KONY 2012

This post is going to be all about Kony 2012.  I wanted to link it to child soldiers, but I've decided that I'll write about both separately.  Anyways, without further ado!


Joseph Kony is a phenomenon.  Joseph Kony went from unknown to exposed to all.  For those of you who don't know who Kony is, he is the head of the Lord's Resistance Army which is a Christian militia whose goal is a bit confusing.  Nonetheless, they're fighting for God.  To help you understand what the LRA is all about I want to share with you what a commander says about what the LRA's ideal government is.

"Lord’s Resistance Army is just the name of the movement, because we are fighting in the name of God. God is the one helping us in the bush. That’s why we created this name, Lord’s Resistance Army. And people always ask us, are we fighting for the [biblical] Ten Commandments of God. That is true – because the Ten Commandments of God is the constitution that God has given to the people of the world. All people. If you go to the constitution, nobody will accept people who steal, nobody could accept to go and take somebody’s wife, nobody could accept to kill the innocent, or whatever. The Ten Commandments carries all this."

                   Vincent Otti 

According to James Alfred Obita, former secretary of external affairs and mobilization of the LRA, the goals of the army are

1. To fight for the immediate restoration of competitive multi-party democracy in Uganda.
2. To see an end to gross violation of human rights and dignity of Ugandans.
3. To ensure the restoration of peace and security in Uganda.
4. To ensure unity, sovereignty and economic prosperity beneficial to all Ugandans.
5. To bring to an end to the repressive policy of deliberate marginalization of groups of people who may not agree with the National Resistance Army's ideology.

At this point, you're probably

• Wondering what about this Kony guy and what is he doing that is making him a big name
• Understanding the motives of the LRA
• Saying, "Okay, what does this have to do with me?  Why should I care?"

If one of these three things occurred, then AHA! I'm a psychic! Mwahahahahahaha!  :D Okay, now back to the business.  Kony became famous because this organization called Invisible Children put up this video that exposed what he did, and naturally, this video became beyond viral.  The video was uploaded in March 5 and it has 87 million views.  In case you haven't watched it, here's the video

I think this video is amazing.  There were some points in this video that really captured my attention.

• When everybody was sleeping on the floor and the guy said, "This has been going on for years?  If that happened one night in America, it would be on the cover of Newsweek." I definitely agree with him.  A lot of the issues that happens in the U.S. are exposed by the media.  Yes there's some things that's aren't exposed, but 99.99% of these serious issues are brought to the attention of the citizens.  However, if you say that there's child exploitation in the D. R. of Congo, a lot of people would be in shock because they have no clue.  A lot of the countries that are suffering the most, we have little to no knowledge of.
• Where they abduct kids as young as four (?) so they can be sex slaves/child soldiers.  I think that the mutilation was very eye-opening and of course sad.
• The top two criminals in International Criminal Court's list: Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti.  Both are major influences in the LRA.  It makes me wonder why both of them, rather than just Kony, haven't been exposed and caught yet.
• No matter, where they're from, people are fighting this war through peace and love and how giving a couple of dollars a month really makes a difference.  I love how it's youngsters advocating and trying to give a voice to the voiceless.
• Despite the elections going on, I love how the guy is saying that this issue is uniting us in order to bring peace and end this issue.  I think that's really special and cool.
• They show that FB really does bring us together and connect that and I have to agree.  Within days, practically every single one of my friends were sharing this video and talking about Kony 2012.

What really bothers me though, is the criticism.  I know that a lot of people think this is a scam, but you have to give Invisible Children props.  They were a nobody organization who became a somebody and is making a huge difference.  That alone is extremely impressive and I think it should be supported rather than hated.

To help make a difference, Invisible Children wants to cover towns up on April 20 with Kony posters at night.  I think that's a pretty cool idea though I haven't made up my mind if I'm going to participate or not.  I know, shame on you, Sabrina!  Anyways, that's all for the Kony topic.  Leave a comment of your opinion of Kony, if you're going to be covering up your town, etc.

How Big of a Reward is Water Really?

So this post is going to be all about the issue of clean water-or lack of clean water to people all around the world and how it affects those people and our society today.  I want to start off with a video that I thought was pretty amazing.  It basically says what the problem of the dirty water is and the effect that it has to nearly a billion people.

I think that the issue of water really is very serious.  I mean there's seven billion people in this world and nearly one billion people are drinking dirty water filled with poop, urine, germs, and many other things.  So that means that one in seven people are drinking dirty water a day.  Another shocking statistic is this

So, around 1,560,000 people die every year just because they can't drink clean water.  So what really are the effects of having dirty water?
-A loss of time.  In Africa alone, people spend 40 billion hours just to get water.  To give you a little bit of a view of how much that is, there are only 8, 760 hours in a year.  In those 40 billion hours, those people are missing out on much.  If you are a child, you are missing out on an education.  If you are an adult, you are missing out on a job.  You are spending hours a day just to walk to get the water instead of going to school or working.
-A drop in the economy.  Did you know that in Africa alone, there is a loss of $28 billion just because of the lack of good water and sanitation.  Also, another shocking fact is that 11% of some of the poorest household's income is spent on water.  Could you imagine having to spend that much money one water especially when you have a low income?
-Supply of food.  I know I was actually surprised to see this one but it does make sense.  Feeding the world takes up 90% of the freshwater.  Since Africa doesn't have the water for irrigation, their supply of food is cut short.
-And the most obvious, disease.  The water is filled with deadly germs.  This leads to diarrhea, cholera, dysentary, amoebas, parasites, e. coli poisoning, schitzomonasis, giardia, and much more.


And finally to finish the facts, what does clean really do to the deaths that are caused by dirty water?

Now the big question that I've been wondering is how do I help out?  I'm a teenager who doesn't have a job and feels really awkward asking other people for money.  I've always wanted to be able to help others out but I just come to a blank as to how.


Honestly, the biggest thing is to raise awareness.  Do you really think that many people know how detrimental dirty water is?  Do you really think that many people are aware of how lucky they are because they have clean water?  Imagine if everyone in the world really knew of how serious this issue is.  The issue of the need to have clean water would go away in a heartbeat.


Another idea is do a walk.  Get a couple of your friends involved and make it an event.  I was looking at the Do Something site and I thought that the idea was really cool, so cool that I think I'm going to plan to do a walk.  I don't think I could get it done by April 13, but hey it's better late then never!  If you're interested in doing a walk, click here.


And one more thing!  There's this website called myWaterProject where you can create a fundraising page and learn more about the issue of clean water.  If you're interested in doing that, click here.


To finish off this post, I'd like to share something that I think that all of the Hunger Games fans would enjoy.  I found this on the Do Something site.

In the ‘Hunger Games’ people have to fight for resources, but that’s just a book. In reality, people struggle for basic needs every day.

 Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post.  I hope you enjoyed it and learned much about the issue of clean water. :D

Hello!

Hello people of the internet!  My name is Sabrina and I am starting this blog to inspire and make you feel good and wanting to help others.  My original idea of this blog is that I would post once a week or so about the stereotypes some controversial topics (abortion, homelessness, etc.) receive and raise awareness of the reality of these issues.  Of course, I think that idea would be extremely cool and I'm going to have so much fun with this because I'm a teen.  I don't really know a lot of what the real world is.  In this blog, I'll be learning so much from research on the internet to going places to learn about these topics.  Besides my controversial topics, I'm going to be spamming videos, pictures, and quotes.


So, enjoy! :D