Introducing our interns and an update on Invisible Children's letter-writing campaign
Hi, I’m Kaitlyn, and I’ll be interning with Resolve Uganda this summer. I’m a rising junior at Brown University, majoring in development studies, and I’m from Springfield, Virginia. I first got involved with advocacy for Northern Uganda two years ago when I saw Invisible Children’s “The Rough Cut” and joined a student group at my school focused on the issue. I’m really excited to be working here at Resolve Uganda!
Hello, I’m Katie and I’m one of three interns at Resolve Uganda this summer. I am a third-year Development Studies and Sociology major at UC–Berkeley. I first became interested in the situation in northern Uganda after watching the Invisible Children documentary, “The Rough Cut” this past fall, and ever since then have been looking for ways to actively get involved in ending the conflict. I’m really happy to be working with Resolve Uganda this summer!
One of our first tasks was to continue organizing and delivering letters that students have been writing to their Senators during Invisible Children’s tours around the country throughout the spring. There were literally enough letters to cover the entire basement floor, and most of the tables. It took weeks to read and categorize the thousands of letters. On top of the letters for each Senator, we attached a brief summary of the most recent developments in Uganda and a list of policy recommendations, including 1) Continue diplomatic engagement to reinforce peace efforts and 2) Commit enhanced support for reconstruction in Uganda.
We’ve spent the past two days delivering more of the letters to the Senate offices. Despite some initial difficulties in walking and climbing up stairs with three heavy bags full of thousands of letters, we feel pretty successful. It was so exciting to get to actually go into the offices of senators like Obama, Clinton, and Kerry. We were a bit star-struck, and really nervous at first, but soon we got the hang of going into the offices and explaining who we were and what the letters were about. The Resolve Uganda office has already received calls from staffers wanting to follow up on what you all had written. It was an incredible feeling to walk into an office and hand over a huge stack of hundreds of letters—everyone in the office would turn to stare and see what it was about. And hopefully we can similarly attract the Senators’ attention—with this many letters, we think we will.