by Maddie Evangelous
“My students were interested in Kony, and when something sparks your interests you should follow it,” World Cultures teacher June Murray explained in reference to the Be Visible Concert on April 27.
Be Visible was a concert to make people aware about the injustices of Joseph Kony and the children he has made suffer. Kony leads the Lord’s Resistance Army in Africa; he kidnaps and forces children to become child soldiers.
“The focus of the concert was to get people thinking about what’s going on and making the message accessible,” Murray said.
A video on Youtube about Kony blew up and over one night had 3 million views. This goes to show how many people care enough to watch a 30 minute video.
“After watching the Kony 2012 video we decided we wanted to do something about it. Kony is such a powerful man and what he is doing is not right,” senior Nicole Fowler said.
Raising awareness, meeting deadlines and working with people in a large group can sometimes be difficult especially when you are trying to accomplish many goals.
“Most of our original plans like giving flyers to stores, getting advertisements from businesses and going to schools to raise awareness were difficult to accomplish with the little time we had, but hearts were set on the concert and knew we would be able to make it happen,” senior Katie Dunnell said.
Some of the topics that the class addressed at the concert to help raise awareness were the rights of a child, schools for Sudan, U.S involvement in Central/East Africa, night commuters (kids who sneak out so that they do not get kidnapped from their homes) and the importance of raising awareness.
“The concert was a lot of fun. I think that everyone just hanging out with friends and having fun let us think about why we were there and it was for the children and raising awareness,” junior Mary Saffoti said.
Besides raising awareness the class sold Kony bracelets at school and during the concert that represented the children who suffer. They raised $900 that was donated to Schools for Sudan.