Blog Updates and inspiration

This year, we have helped many former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) captives reunite with their families. One of those people is David, a seventeen-year-old boy from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In 2012, David was eleven years old, in his third year of primary school. One day, he went with his mother to collect water […]

For the last year and a half, Pauline Zerla has lived in the remote town of Obo in Southeastern Central African Republic (CAR), overseeing Invisible Children’s protection, detection, and recovery programs. As her time with Invisible Children is coming to an end and she prepares to move back home to her native, Brussels, she offered […]

On Saturday a 19-year-old male, Issa Guy Parfait, escaped from the LRA after more than a year in captivity.   Guy was abducted in July of 2013  from his home in the Central African Republic on his way back from working in the peanut fields. He was taken along with two other young males and […]

It is not difficult for Ocaya Jimmy to remember the night he was abducted by the LRA. The year was 1997, and Jimmy was 9 years old. “They came in, broke in the house where we were at and they tortured one of my cousins seriously,” Jimmy recalls. Soon after, he and four of his cousins […]

Okot Patrick was hiding in a tree when he heard his younger brother crying. “I wanted to shout ‘who is now disturbing my brother?’” he said. “I climbed down and started running, but I stepped on some sticks and they heard me. “ The whole compound was filled with members of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). […]

As we announced on Tuesday, December 10, 2013, the largest defection of LRA combatants since 2008 occurred in Central African Republic last week. The “Zemio 19” was made up of 9 men, 4 women, and 6 children. How they lived Invisible Children’s team in Central African Republic had a chance to debrief with the 9 […]

Celebrate everything. Every escape. Every name. Every life. On November 30, 2013, a 15-year-old Congolese boy named Matthew* escaped from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Originally abducted in 2008, he had spent five years in LRA captivity. The group he was traveling with consisted of ten fighters, seven women, and two children (Matthew and an […]

This morning, staff member Carl Stevens met up with our International Programs Director, Adam Finck, to discuss the recent attacks by Joseph Kony’s LRA in South Sudan and what Invisible Children is doing to respond to this situation. As one of the leading experts in the LRA conflict, Adam was able to share some of the […]

Ending a war by dropping pieces of paper out of an airplane is kind of bizarre. Before working at Invisible Children, I had never even heard of a “defection campaign” before. So hang out with us for a second as we explain what this program is, why it’s the perfect way to rescue more men and women […]

The tally of those who have lost a family member, been displaced, or been abducted as a result of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continues to grow decades after the conflict began. In northern Uganda, seven years after the LRA moved into central Africa and South Sudan, it’s difficult to find anyone who has not been affected by […]