Why Visible People?

By naming our project, "Visible People", we hope to raise two issues that is pertinent not only to our critique of Invisible Children, but also to humanitarianism in general.

Children are often used as the face of advocacy campaigns and calls to donate to humanitarian relief efforts. Let's face it, pictures of suffering children bring in money. It's not a bad thing that people want to save children. Faces of suffering children cause us to feel compassion and empathy. We don't want kids to get hurt. No one does. It's a natural human response. It's also effective marketing. We want to point out that adults are also affected by natural disasters and political crises. By silencing the voices of these adults, a humanitarian organization oversimplifies the crisis and eliminates the possibility of peering into the deeper root causes.

That leads us to the second point. The name Invisible Children refers to the idea that the crisis in northern Uganda, in particular, the night commuters (children travelling each night to the town centre to sleep in order to avoid being kidnapped by rebel forces), had been invisible to the world. However, with IC's tireless advocacy campaign in North America and its focus on trying to raise awareness about the Uganda among the average North American teenager, has the focus shifted from Uganda back onto North America? Has the night commuter's own voice and the voices of the Acholi community leaders hidden behind glitzy IC campaigns to turn these North American teenagers into so-called humanitarians by simply joining a campaign to raise money?