Congo Week

College students and university groups: Utah for Congo invites you to join us and Friends of the Congo for CONGO WEEK, October 17-23, 2011.  Join with college students in 35 countries and on 135 campuses to break the silence around the crisis in Congo!

Utah for Congo is here to help you plan successful events that will generate discussion and action on your college campuses.  We can visit your campus to give a presentation about the Congo crisis (or, if the scheduling is difficult, possibly join you via skype).  Although you would be responsible for organizing and publicizing the events, Utah for Congo can offer logistical support and assistance along the way.  Missy was the founder of the UNICEF student group at BYU and has lots of experience organizing on-campus events and community fundraisers.

Here are some suggested events that your student group could plan:

• A film screening.  ("Crisis in the Congo," a short film from Friends of the Congo, can be downloaded and screened for free, or Utah for Congo can provide you with other film suggestions.)
• A presentation or academic panel discussion.  Consider hosting faculty members at your campus who have expertise in Central Africa, gender issues, sexual violence, peace and conflict studies, or international development issues.
• Tabling and passing out information.  We can provide you with flyers and literature that you can use to educate your university community about the crisis and their connection to it.
• A fundraising event.  You could raise money for Friends of the Congo, or we can also suggest a number of organizations that are working in DR Congo if you have a specific area or concern that you'd like to raise funds for.  You could plan a benefit concert, a dinner party, a hunger banquet, an art exhibit, a bake sale, or any other fundraiser that you can imagine!  We're happy to provide ideas and logistical support if you decide to go this route.
• A local service project.  Are there groups in your community that serve refugees, survivors of sexual trauma, or survivors of war and armed conflict?  (We bet there are.  If you don't know, we can help you find out.)  Why not contact them to find out what their needs are?
• The Cell Out, an organized period where participants turn off their cell phones as an awareness-raising tactic (see here for details).
• Operation Recycle, where you collect old cell phones for recycling.

Check out the Organizers' Tool Kit from Friends of the Congo for more ideas and resources.

So far we are working with the STAND student group at Weber State, and we'd love to see events happening on college campuses across Utah.  Contact us at utahforcongo@gmail.com to let us know about your vision for Congo Week at your school, and we'll help however we can.  We'd also love to publicize your events on our blog and facebook page,

You'll need to get your group together and start planning soon, so don't delay!  Let's break the silence and stoke the activist spirit in Utah.  E-mail us today!

Our Sister Somalia Dinner Party

Last night was our Sister Somalia dinner party.  We were able to raise some money for victims of gender-based violence in Somalia, and we were also able to enjoy the company of each other and Lisa Shannon (via skype!)

Lisa recorded our conversation, and we will try to get it up on the blog for you to watch/listen to.  We talked about the situation of women in Somalia and about what Fartun Adan's organization is doing to help.  We talked about activism, policy, how to combat compassion fatigue, and (of course) about DR Congo.

For those who weren't able to make it, here are some photos of our evening.  We enjoyed a vegan dinner made almost exclusively of locally-grown, organic ingredients from our gardens and donated by BUG Farms (I wrote about why local food was such an important component of our dinner in this blog post.  Oh, and I'll post recipes here, if you're interested.)

Even if you didn't join us last night, you can still make a donation to the Elman Peace & Human Rights Center in Somalia.  Your donation will help Fartun Adan start Somalia's first rape crisis hotline, and enable her to provide victims of rape and violence with counseling, relocation aid, community, and vocational assistance.  You can donate online by clicking here.

Sister Somalia

If you've checked the news lately, you've seen the tragic images coming out of Somalia.  Because of a conflation of factors (like brutal drought and widespread insecurity and inept governance and poverty and etc.etc.etc.), an estimated 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are being affected by drought and famine, and at least 100,000 people have already fled to refugee camps.  It's estimated that 29,000 children have died of starvation in the past 90 days alone.  The situation is dire.

Today I read a story about an 11-year-old boy in Ghana named Andrew Adansi-Bonnha who has been so affected by the crisis in Somalia that he has set a personal goal to raise $13 million for famine victims.  So in Ghana, where the average yearly income is $2,500 a year, Andrew is spending his summer vacation walking from office to office, collecting donations for people in Somalia, where the average yearly income is $600 a year.  So far Andrew has collected $6,500... and $500 of that came from his father, who donated his entire July salary to the cause.

I also read a bunch of stories this week about rape in Somalia.  Rape often proliferates when there is a resource shortage, and the present moment in Somalia is no exception to this trend.  Women fleeing their homes in Somalia are telling stories of being raped as they travel, and women in refugee camps are often subjected to sexual violence.  The International Rescue Committee reports that "the IRC's operation in Dadaab saw a four-fold increase in sexual violence attacks in June, and that it doubled again in July and continued to increase in August."

We want to provide our Utah for Congo supporters with a way to send assistance to women in Somalia who are being affected by famine and gender-based violence, and so we are planning a Sister Somalia dinner party to raise money for the Elman Peace and Human Rights Center, a Somali organization founded and run by Fartun Adan, who is an experienced and tireless advocate for women in Somalia.

Here's the plan for the dinner party; it's pretty simple.
-We make dinner for you.
-You bring a donation for Sister Somalia.
-After dinner, we will have a skype conversation with Lisa Shannon, the activist/writer who wrote A Thousand Sisters and founded Run for Congo Women.  This is a great chance for us to talk to Lisa in person and ask her questions!

Because we will be making dinner, the dinner party is by-invitation... so if you'd like an invitation with the address, you can send us an email at utahforcongo@gmail.com or contact us on our facebook page.  We'd love to have you join us!

If you can't make it that night, please consider making a donation to Sister Somalia or another organization that is on the ground in Somalia (see this link for a list of organizations).  If Andrew Adansi-Bonnha's father could spare his entire monthly salary, and if Andrew himself is willing to commit his entire summer vacation to his fundraising drive, surely each of us can do something.