About 10 AU students decorated downtown D.C. with stickers and posters in support for the KONY 2012 campaign for “Cover the Night” April 20.
“Cover the Night” was an international campaign to blanket cities with KONY paraphernalia to raise awareness of the Invisible Children campaign, according to the non-profit’s viral video.
The purpose behind “Cover the Night” was to transfer the Kony 2012 campaign from the Internet to the real world through tangible activism.
Kony is the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a Ugandan guerilla group known for kidnapping children and forcing them to fight the LRA’s enemies.
The AU club One World Initiative worked with Invisible Children and non-profit Resolve to launch the campaign Fight Back/Rebuild in February. Fight Back/Rebuild coordinated AU’s participation in “Cover the Night.”
Students also volunteered at various projects around the D.C. area as part of the “Cover the Night” campaign. Projects included playing with youth from underprivileged neighborhoods in an after-school program and cleaning up the Anacostia River with Earth Conservation Corps.
“By working in our communities, we dismiss notions of ‘slacktivism’ and single-issue sympathizers,” said Travis Mc-Kay-Roberts, a junior in the School of International Service and founder of One World Initiative. “By plastering the world with our posters and voices, we dismiss the claims that our movement is easily dismissed, or has fizzled out entirely.”
Invisible Children’s CEO Ben Keesey and Jacob Acaye, the Ugandan boy who was prominently featured in part one of the Kony 2012 video, volunteered alongside AU students in D.C. area service projects.
McKay-Roberts said support from One World Initiative will continue as long as Kony remains at large.
“Fight Back/Rebuild isn’t stopping until Kony is captured,” he said, “and there will still be work after that.”
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