Kony 2012

[Alexis Whitewave]

Hey guys, I'm trying to raise awareness of Kony 2012!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

If you haven't already, I highly recommend you watch the above video and support Kony 2012.

[Paragon]

I would check Invisible Children's financial accounts first - they make for interesting reading...

[Cayenne]

Seconding what Paragon said.

It's a worthy cause. But do your research first, because part of it is very, very shady.

[Lusa]

Kony is a monster, yes, but the film is a bit misrepresentative. Also, the whole Kony 2012 thing wants public pressure to be able to influence military action, which could put us on a very slippery slope.

I urge everyone to do their research on Invisible Children, because their finances are quite shady. Honestly I think people in America should focus their attention on problems in their own community, because then they can at least make sure that their donations are actually reaching the needy.

[Alexis Whitewave]

I have actually researched into it and read quite a few articles and the likes - but all I get is a sense that there is no 'symbol of hope', if you understand me. Think about what would have happened in the past if we only focused on our own community. We as human beings should help each other in times of need if we can, both in our own communities and abroad.
Perhaps the Kony 2012 campaign is not the perfect organization it appears to be, but at least it is doing something.

[Cayenne]

Good article.

[Paragon]

That's a good article, I saw it earlier.

Alexis - I don't have a problem with the sentiment at all, it's just that I won't be jumping on the bandwagon and spreading the viral video when I worry the charity is profiting from Kony's actions.

[Gossamer]

When I saw this posting I immediately got angry and thought why can't people on Mizahar stay away from this nonsense? I'd hope at least writers would be curious enough to dig deep enough and do enough research to understand whats really going on. I'm not trying to be rude here, but really if you DID your research like you said you've done, you'd realize what this actually is. It's a shady social media organization CASHING IN on the efforts of a lot of multi-national government military organizations and NGO's quietly taking care of a problem without some huge shock and awe campaign. It's really tough ferreting a couple of hundred survivors out of the jungle, which is probably the only reason this organization is still alive. And tons of financing is going to pour into this organization because of Kony 2012 and make a lot of people rich, maybe build a few schools to justify it (which are dirt cheap to build in Africa btw), and call it good.

There are so many really rock solid organizations with long track records of helping Africa who have completely transparent finances that will do your time and money so much better than what this one will.

Instead of spreading awareness about Kony.. how about trying something like talking about Giving What We Can so you can spread awareness about charity and financial aid throughout the world. GWWC is relatively new group based out of Oxford and is an international organization of awareness and recommendation in charity work world wide. Give it a good read. For example, you'll save millions of peoples lives if you can fight Malaria rather than groups like Kony.. mostly women and children btw. The number one ranked charity in the world by numerous organizations is Against Malaria Foundation.

Here's what GWWC says about them:

Against Malaria Foundation (AMF)

website ⋅ donations page ⋅ GiveWell review
What Is AMF?

Against Malaria Foundation was founded in 2005 and focuses solely on distributing long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets in order to prevent malarial infection in 35 countries across Africa, Asia and South America.

AMF receives and reviews proposals from charities that need bed nets; when a proposal is approved it purchases and ships nets for the charity. It then publishes pre-distribution and post-distribution reports on its website.
Why choose AMF?

Notable attractive features of AMF include:

They use long-lasting insecticide treated nets, which do not require re-treatment. This means that they are likely to exceed the cost-effectiveness figures we cited on the malaria page.2
They are committed to transparency and self-monitoring. On their website, they publish figures regarding their total income and total number of distributed nets and for each distribution they publish details of the program, including 10-40 post-distribution photos.
Their estimate for the total cost of distributing a net is about $6.40 —$4.30 for the cost of the net and $2.07 for all other costs (including distribution and monitoring). This is around $2 cheaper than the typical cost of net distribution to other charities.
They are rated as one of the six most highly recommended charities by GiveWell, another charity evaluator. GiveWell rates AMF as ‘strong’ for monitoring and evaluation and ‘excellent’ for transparency and cost-effectiveness.

In sum, Against Malaria Foundation is very good at what it does, and we consider it to be the best charity that we know of that focuses on fighting malaria.

So basically... don't believe everything you see especially things that go viral on the net.

[Phoenix]

The fact that it went viral on FACEBOOK should have been warning enough.

In fact, IC is currently under investigation. They think less than 2% of the "charity"s money goes to the cause.

And, in my opinion, this isn't "doing something". Not anything good, anyway. This is following a trend via social media that just pegs the young and unaware with horribly wrong and biasly edited information.