Name: Oliver Eig

Social Justice Group: Child Soldiers

Date of Fieldwork: November 15, 2017

Name of Organization: Invisible Children

Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Elizabeth Guillen

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did:

We interviewed an Invisible Children employee (Elizabeth Guillen) in Los Angeles and asked her questions about Invisible Children, such as what their goals are and how they are trying to reach those goals.

What I learned:

Joseph Kony, an international criminal, rebel army leader, and controller of child soldiers located in Uganda, has not been captured yet. Invisible Children has expanded their mission beyond him and are now focused on reducing violence in Central Africa through other large groups there that are using natural resources. She did not specify the names of these groups in our interview, so we will try to find out the names of these groups in later fieldwork. A lot of violent groups in Central Africa are using natural resources such as the ivory tusk of the elephant, and other rare natural resources to fund their violent actions, whether that is buying guns, or other dangerous weapons to harm communities. They have expanded their mission beyond Kony to encompass working to target those groups as well. Their current goals are to reduce violence in Central Africa and bring home children that were abducted by groups and have been forced to join these armies

What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:

I have learned about social justice work that it is hard to find good information on very specific issues because of the lack of employees that an organization has and where their main base is located. This is because we did not get very much information from Elizabeth Guillen than we expected. We also learned that there is more to the issue of children in armed conflict than just child soldiers. The topic includes child sex slaves being used by these groups, children that are living in an area of war, child suicide bombers, and children in gangs.