Aylin Saner
Students of the University of Tampa attended the Gulu Walk of 2006 Saturday, Oct. 21 at Uptown Altamonte in Orlando to partake in a walk-a-thon for the children of northern Uganda. The walk was four miles, stretching the landscape of canopies, plazas and the clear blue skies of Orlando. UT participants included Aylin Saner, Aurore Scordino, Jill Rymut, Chanel Stewart, David Andrade, Adam Kunz, Sheandra Pollack, Elizabeth Benninger, Nastacia Maas and Phil Michaels. The students representing Skull and Bones, the Art History Honors Society and Alpha Epsilon Delta, had the opportunity to be apart of a globally changing issue taking place in our world today.
With the atrocities taking place in the Sudan, there is also a connected struggle involving night commuters, or children that have been running away from rebel army abductions. Due to the 20 year long war in Uganda, the vulnerability has been primarily set on its children, ranging from infancy to about 20 years of age. The rebel armies fighting against the government have been on missions to abduct children from their villages and brainwash them through the training of violence and murder. At age five a young child has a rifle placed in his hand and is told to shoot in clear-cutting angles, thus confirming the death of hundreds and thousands of future victims. Not only must the fighting stop, but we, as American citizens, need to expose the many faces of Ugandan children that have been forced into night commuting. These children must walk for miles from their villages to hospitals, schools and abandoned buildings, where they spend the night in cramped basement areas. The walking is the most vulnerable portion of the night commuter’s journey, where being caught or shot is very likely to happen. The children sometimes for miles walk with no shoes, through dirt, swamps, trash and et cetera until they finally reach their intended destination.
Gulu Walk is an international campaign of Athletes for Africa, a registered Canadian charity, and is coordinated in the United States in partnership with the Africa Faith ‘ Justice Network. The first Gulu Walk began in July of 2005 with the two co-founders, Adrian Bradbury and Kieran Hayward and has spread across the globe, reaching thousands of people worldwide.
Tampa students discovered that the Orlando walk was organized by an eighth grade student, Virginia Thomas, along with her friends and family. The featured band of the event was Cold Funk Fusion, who played a large range of music from jazz, to Pink Floyd, to upbeat rock and roll. Thomas was previously interested in Invisible Children, a similar cause to Gulu Walk, and decided to register Orlando for one of the walk-a-thon sites in the U.S. She had Jake, a member of a missionary group, come out and talk about his first-hand experience with the children in Uganda. When I asked her if she would do an event like this again, Thomas immediately answered “In a heartbeat!” With over 100 people who attended the walk, Thomas is motivated to already plan for next year’s walk-a-thon. Her willingness to make a change gives this country hope for future generations to come. It is very crucial to understand that it is up to the younger generations to make a difference, thereby affecting the image of our world.
As a student of the University of Tampa, I am proud to speak on behalf of like-minded individuals who are brave enough to take a stand, regardless of their age or social standing, and speak out about issues that have taken a toll on our global community.
As Mahatma Ghandi once said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
