Student raising funds for ZeroLRA, trip to Uganda

By Stuart Hedstrom 
Staff Writer

    DOVER-FOXCROFT — This past August Chris Stewart, a resident of Dover-Foxcroft and junior at Foxcroft Academy, traveled to Los Angeles where he attended the Fourth Estate Global Leadership Summit. The summit enables several thousand students and educators to meet like-minded individuals, learn skills and gain experiences that will help them make a difference in their own communities and around the world.

Observer photo/Stuart Hedstrom

    UGANDAN BRACELETS — Foxcroft Academy junior Chris Stewart is selling reed bracelets made in Uganda to benefit ZeroLRA, a campaign of Invisible Children which aims to put an end to the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the group’s use of child soldiers. If Stewart meets his fundraising goal of $20,000 he will receive a trip to Uganda to see areas where the LRA once had a presence.

    “It was awesome, the whole experience,” Stewart said, also mentioning the Aug. 8-11 trip to Los Angeles was his first time flying. “The conference focuses on many social issues around the world,” he said, such as poverty and human trafficking. The U.S. UN Ambassador Samantha Power was among the speakers at the summit.
    For about two years Stewart has been involved with Invisible Children, a non-profit organization working to end put an end to the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in central Africa and restore the impacted areas to peace and prosperity. The LRA is a rebel group led by Joseph Kony that abducts children from their homes and forces them to become soldiers, formerly existing in Uganda before moving to South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
    “I met with people who were soldiers in the LRA,” Stewart said about his time at the Fourth Estate Global Leadership Summit, which was hosted by Invisible Children. “The LRA is known for going village to village, looting and kidnapping and sometimes they will relentlessly kill people,” he said. Stewart said the guerrilla group has forced some of its child soldiers to kill their own parents as a rite of passage.
    “I am doing a fundraiser for overturning the LRA,” Steward said, as he is selling reed bracelets that were handmade in Uganda. “Basically I am raising money to help their efforts to help LRA fighters defect,” he said. He explained Invisible Children’s newest campaign, ZeroLRA, will drop flyers from the air containing directions for where the group’s soldiers can go to be safe, also promising them amnesty for some of the crimes the soldiers may have committed while conscripted in the LRA. The group also has helicopter speakers flying over LRA areas broadcasting defection instructions.
    Stewart said many soldiers do not defect after being brainwashed by the LRA, being too fearful of the possible reprisals if they are caught or afraid of what the LRA has said it would do to their family members. He said the LRA has cut off parts of the faces of those caught trying to leave, and there have been instances where those defecting are abducted again and then killed in front of other soldiers as a message.
    “If I raise $20,000 I get a trip to Uganda,” Stewart said about an all-expenses trip across the globe. “I will get to see the affected sites,” he added about the rehabilitation and prevention measures in areas that once had an LRA presence.
    “I would love to raise my goal; to see first-hand what’s going on, to see the rehab centers that are there and to meet with ex-soldiers,” Stewart said, with a possible Ugandan trip taking place in the summer of 2014.
    Funds from the bracelet sales through the end of the year, as well as monetary contributions, go toward Stewart’s $20,000 goal. “The Ugandan reed bracelets were made by men and women in Uganda who were affected (by the LRA), and the bracelets provide them with a source of income,” he said.
    The $5 bracelets, made of reed and recycled wire, can be adjusted to fit all sizes, and are available in blue, yellow, black, gray and brown.
    “It’s important to me because in this day and age to know these kinds of things are going on, it’s crazy if you think about it,” Stewart said. “It is important for all of us to band together.”
    For more information, please contact Stewart at christopher.stewart@foxcroftacademy.org.