Follow Your Lead

Get up and make it known
Never take a chance alone
I'll be there whenever
You're at a crossroads
I know it will take some time
I know it's gonna take it slow
All you gotta do is show me
Follow Your Lead, Hanson

At this point, I had the urge and passion to do something about the state of the world and especially the continent of Africa. I began to do research and found some pretty amazing things. Of course, I already knew about TOMS Shoes and their incredible one-for-one policy. I had also heard of Invisible Children in my high school Non-Western Culture class.
Invisible Children was originally started because three twenty-somethings went to Africa in search of an adventure. They found a now-23-year war and suffering in the people living there. (To learn more, invisiblechildren.com) I looked into them again and found out that they had grown as well. They had helped reduce the number of orphans that had to travel many miles every day to sleep in abandoned buildings to avoid being captured by the rebel army in Uganda. They brought U.S. government attention to the situation in Uganda and demanded that the U.S. increase their involvement. They are currently holding their second annual Schools for Schools campaign, which ends December 18th. This campaign raises money to help rebuild schools in Uganda that have been damaged or destroyed by war.
These main organizations gave me more hope but I still felt I should do more. I talked to a few friends of mine and we began brainstorming. (Thanks Dan and Laura.) We decided the most feasible thing that we could do would be to utilize the position we held at the university. So we began an organization. We did not have a name, but we had a vision. We wanted to make sure that everyone on campus had the same information that we had, and we wanted to give students something simple and feasible that they could do that was affordable and made a real change. One of the problems I really saw with working with charities was that many people are expected to throw money at the problem. This is not exactly what we wanted to do for two reasons. 1) Many college students do not have much money. 2) The problem does not exactly personal to just throw money at the problem. I am not saying that financial assistance is not necessary. It is definitely needed. With our situation and audience, we wanted to focus on other outlets for action.
While naming the organization, action was always any overlying theme, because we felt that many times awareness is the only focus. While this was important, we felt like awareness would only take us so far. Action was necessary to really make the difference. We decided that our name should be bold and recognizable so we agreed on A.F.R.I.C.A. Figuring out what it stood for was a little more difficult. Because action was necessary, action words only seemed natural so A.F.R.I.C.A. now stand for Aid Facilitate Respond Inform Communicate Act.
So, we had a few members, a name, and a vision. In order to become an official organization on TU campus, an advisor was needed. This turned out to be the difficult part. We asked for recommendations from a few faculty members and one name came up a few times. I emailed that professor and she seemed really excited about the prospect. A meeting was set up to talk about the details and the necessary involvement. Just before the meeting, I received an email from this potential advisor that she was still really excited about the idea but that we should change up the basis for the organization. She wanted to make the focus the culture of Africa and completely ignore any suffering that was taking place. When I responded that while African culture is important and will be included in programming, our focus was to make a difference in the quality of life for those in Africa. This no-longer-potential advisor responded with a less that professional email that we would insult the African students on campus and that our focus would be too limiting and would result in sure failure.
Still reeling from such an email, I continued the search for an advisor. While the search went on, so did the organization. We walked as an organization in the November 11th walk in Tulsa with Hanson, with t-shirts and a poster. I spoke to Isaac about what we had been doing and he received it very well, stating that what we were doing was what it was really about. The walk was a starting point, a point of inspiration to spark projects like ours.
We held a screening of media from Invisible Children (IC) and had a few of the roadies come answer questions and give more information about how to become involved. All of this we did as an unofficial organization, which basically means that any costs came out of our own pocket.
As our popularity on campus grew, our member number grew as well. We went from four to ten in a matter of months. (Not a bad increase for a small private school in Oklahoma.) We still had no advisor but we were gaining momentum and my hope for the organization grew.