Blog Updates and inspiration

She drinks a glass of water. She fills a tub with clothes to scrub and rinses them out with water. She puts a pot of water on the stove to boil vegetables for dinner. Her six children tramp home covered in dust from school or playing with their friends, and she has set aside plastic […]

Invisible Children doesn’t stop at documenting atrocities or activating youth or protecting civilians or rehabilitating post-conflict communities. We do it all. And we do it through a four-part model that focuses exclusively on the LRA conflict, addressing it in its entirety: immediate needs and long-term effects. One of the four parts of the comprehensive model is Recovery. […]

Emma Williamson and Carolyn Oliver, through their dedication and conviction, are proving that well being on a global scale begins with the individual. Emma was inspired by our mission and wanted to get the word out. While still in high school, she got in touch with us to host a screening and our Roadies traveled […]

Predominantly made up of women whose lips were cut by the Lord’s Resistance Army during the war in northern Uganda, group Rubanga Tek (God is strong) is a Village Saving and Loan Associations group in Lamwo District. The group was initiated last year with support from Invisible Children Uganda’s regional office, and so far has […]

Patrick Ocan is a member of the Village Savings and Loan Associations group Pur Kwiri Alok, which has the optimistic meaning “there is no loss in farming.” Everyone in the group is a farmer. For many members of the group, life has been about survival. Completing an education had to be put on the back […]

Awilo Kristie plants beans for her family. Later this month, she and other members of an Invisible Children Uganda Village Savings and Loan Association will work together to plant a field and share the profits.

Members of a Village Savings and Loan Associations group know how to make visitors feel welcome as they come singing and dancing to meet us. With currently 2, 850 members, they meet once a week in groups of 30 to save money together, taking out loans to start up small businesses. Learn more about the […]

Don’t get us wrong – our two staff writers are perfectly content working out of our San Diego office (they’re both SD natives). When they heard the news that they were traveling to Uganda to visit our Gulu and Kampala offices and tour our programs, though, it’s safe to say they were more than willing […]

so·cial en·ter·prise – noun: an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being, rather than maximizing profits for external shareholders. We believe in cultivating a culturally rich world so we invest in social programs that help sustain communities. While you may think we’re talking about our favorite social enterprises MEND and VSLA (and we are) but we recently stumbled upon a similar […]

This is all I know: I would have loved to be part of a program that helped me learn about money before I had to learn about it myself through overdraft, and bank fees, and no savings. Our Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA) program in Gulu, Uganda began in 2009, and consists of groups […]