Some of our advocates recently produced this PSA confronting the reality of child soldiering. They turned one of our rescued child soldiers stories in to a children’s picture book, gathered some American kids and captured their reactions.
[youtube width=”600″ height=”450″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDhumvq58dQ[/youtube]
Joanna Hile, 21, and Lydia Kim, 28, are full-time Graphic Design students at Virginia Commonwealth University. They produced this video for a recent school project and had much to say about why they did:
Why did you choose a justice-oriented project to cover?
We chose justice through compassion. We wanted to educate a broad audience about the issue because it seems that so many have no idea about this issue. What better way to educate people on child soldiers than attempting to explain the issue to children. We wanted to arm children with the information about children just like them who have none of the opportunities they do. We hope this can impact them as well as their parents to make a difference in the lives of child soldiers.
Why did you choose child soldiers?
Children have rights to learn, to have experiences, to play with friends and be loved. The joy of a child should never be snuffed out by money, power, or abuse. We, along with Project: AK-47, hope to wipe out the issue of child soldiers and make them a problem of the past.
Why did you choose Project: AK-47?
We chose Project: AK-47 because they do so much for children in various third-world countries while other organizations choose to only target one country. While targeting one country is good, we cannot neglect the children in other nations. Unfortunately, we had never heard about Project: AK-47 until we did research on the issue of child soldiers, so we want to get their name out in the community and get people visiting their website to find out how they can help.
We would like to extend a special thanks to Joanna and Lydia for their engagement, protest and heart! They, along with the rest of our advocate alliance, play significant roles in the fight that will ultimately lead to the abolition of one of the cruelest forms of modern day slavery: child soldiering. Thank you!