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Schools

Dominican University hosts lecture and film screening by Invisible Children organization

Dominican University’s Graduate School of Social Work is hosting on Thursday, April 19 the screening of a new documentary by Invisible Children, a nonprofit organization that uses film, grassroots advocacy and social action to bring awareness of atrocities committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. The documentary will be screened at 6:00 p.m. in Dominican’s Social Hall and will be followed by a presentation by a young woman who grew up in Uganda’s war zone and was kidnapped by the LRA.

Invisible Children was founded in 2004 by three college graduates who traveled to Central Africa intending on creating a film about the war in Darfur. They changed their focus to the situation in northern Uganda, specifically the abduction of children to be trained as soldiers by Joseph Kony, leader of Uganda’s LRA. They created a film, Rough Cut, depicting the lives of Ugandan children who walk miles every night to places of refuge to avoid capture by the LRA. The organization has been successful at mobilizing thousands of American teenagers to spread awareness and raise funds to help African youth affected by war.

Last month, Invisible Children launched a new internet video campaign, Kony 2012, designed to create new awareness of Kony, an indicted war criminal, and to advocate for his arrest by the end of 2012. The video went viral, reaching more than 40 million views in three days.

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Invisible Children is sponsoring a national Cover the Night event on April 20 during which participants in cities across the country will meet at sundown to put up posters and stickers in an effort to make Kony “famous” and to advocate for his arrest.

For more information about Dominican’s free program on Invisible Children, contact Michelle Martin, lecturer in the Graduate School of Social Work, at (708) 714-9149. Dominican University is located at 7900 W. Division Street, River Forest.

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Founded in 1901, Dominican University is a comprehensive, coeducational Catholic institution offering bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees through the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the Brennan School of Business, the School of Education, and the Graduate School of Social Work. The university also offers a doctoral degree in library and information science. In the 2012 issue of America’s Best Colleges, U.S. News & World Report ranked Dominican University in the top 20 of Midwest master’s level universities. The magazine also ranked Dominican as one of three Great Schools at a Great Price in Illinois.

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