The Advocacy Campaign to Date
For this documentary the producers teamed up with two international Non-Governmental Organizations, International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the International Medical Corps. (IMC). These organizations were extremely supportive to the film crew in northern Uganda and will partner with the producers to ensure an advocacy program to support northern Uganda when this film is completed.
• Members of the Voices team met with senior Senators on the Appropriations Committee advocate for additional assistance for northern Uganda in the supplemental to the 2008 budget. Congress and the President approved allocating 17.5 million dollars for northern Uganda.
• Voices participated in the IRC’s Freedom Awards. Tom Brokaw introduced actors including Liv Ullmann and Dulé Hill who performed the Ugandan’s monologues followed by clips of the film. At the event, General Electric announced a one million dollar gift to IRC’s program in northern Uganda for girls’ education.
• The World Affairs Council of Philadelphia presented a Voices program that included a monologue performed by Allison Janney, clips from the film and a panel discussion with a group of experts including John Prendergast.
• The Los Angeles and New York kick-offs of GuluWalk included a Voices presentation to raise awareness and funding for programs in northern Uganda.
• Invisible Children’s “Displace Me” and “Rescue Me” events included Voices presentations for over 8,000 attendees.
• The Voices team presented a program at Resolve Uganda’s 2008 and 2009 lobbying events on Capitol Hill. The 2009 lobbying efforts recently resulted in the bi partisan LRA Disarmament and northern Uganda Recovery Act unanimously passing the United States Senate on March It is the most widely supported Africa related legislation in at least 35 years (as far back as the electronic archives go).
• Voices has just begun working with High Schools and Universities to educate students about the situation in northern Uganda, coaching the students to perform a collection of plays and monologues for their community, followed by a letter-writing campaign to their elected officials. A recent example of this is The Stella Adler School of Acting’s Art and Social Activism Festival in New York with a monologue performed by Ruby Dee, the Weston Public School District in Massachusetts, University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, and Chestnut Hill College in Pennsylvania among others.
Jan Egeland, UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, stated; “The conflict in northern Uganda is the biggest forgotten, neglected humanitarian crisis in the world today.” Our goal is that it remain forgotten and neglected no longer.
Learn more about these two important organizations:
