Beth Puricelli inspired a student activist group.

The Family and Consumer Sciences instructor did so by showing one of her classes a 2001 film of the devastation children are experiencing in Uganda.

Thousands of Ugandan children “night commute,” making the arduous journey across the perilous countryside every night to escape an even greater danger.

This journey is necessary for the children to avoid abduction, rape or murder by the Lord’s Resistance Army, which is currently embroiled in civil war with the Ugandan government.

Led by Joseph Kony, the LRA has abducted more than 20,000 children and brainwashed them into fighting the Ugandan army in an attempt to overthrow the current government and replace it with a theocracy devoted to Christianity.

This war has raged in northern Uganda for the past 20 years and has crippled the country’s educational system and destroyed many homes and families.

Three film students from California witnessed firsthand the devastation created by the LRA and made a documentary about the situation, called “Invisible Children.”

The horrors Jason Russell, Laren Poole and Bobby Bailey saw inspired them help the people of Uganda.

The Invisible Children movement was founded.

Matt Wood, Invisible Children regional manager for the Great Lakes and New England areas, said the documentary made by the group’s founders is one of the organization’s greatest recruiting tools.

“After people see the movie, they’re like ‘What can we do to change this?'” he said.

Wood said many students who decide to get involved do so because of instructors like Puricelli.

Puricelli said she presented the film for her students because she wanted to expose them to a subject not widely discussed in America.

“I wanted to make sure students were aware of a war that has been going on for the past 20 years,” she said.

After showing the film in one of her classes this semester, Puricelli was approached by two students about creating a student group to become involved in the “Schools for Schools” program. She said she was “pleasantly surprised” by the student response.

Puricelli said she had not expected students to want to be so proactive after viewing the movie and was glad to see students become involved in a problem from another part of the world.

“I’m proud of Eastern students for taking an interest in events that have no effect on them,” she said.

Senior FCS family services major Amanda Suggs, president of the Eastern Invisible Children student group, said the main goal of the group is to raise awareness on campus about the situation in Uganda.

Suggs said many students may be, as she once was, unaware of the long-running civil war in Uganda.

“I had no idea there was a war going on there for 20 years,” she said. “It really blew my mind.”

She said the group has raised about $400 for its school in Uganda with candle and water bottle sales over the past year.

The group also recently sponsored a viewing of the documentary for students, where afterwards several students expressed interest in joining the group.

Wood said the Invisible Children movement has several goals. Most important among them is the education and safety of the millions of children caught in the middle of the conflict.

He said the founding trio had originally envisioned a kind of fortress where Ugandan citizens could live to escape the war but were told that might only put the people in more danger.

What the Ugandan citizens and government believed would be more effective than the fortress idea, Wood said, was money and manpower to help reinvigorate the country’s educational system.

A short video showing how decrepit and unsafe schools in Uganda are can be viewed online.

Wood said the group decided to build new schools and renovate old ones. Many of the new schools and renovations included giving them new textbooks and teachers while providing safe and sanitary institutions of education.

To fund these projects, the group created the “Schools 4 Schools” program, in which high schools and colleges in the U.S. could adopt a school in Uganda and raise money to help supply or make repairs to their individual school.

Wood said the program has been effective at funding the school building projects.

“It has allowed us to enact a lot of changes in the Ugandan school system,” he said.

In 2006, nearly 600 American schools in the program raised $1.2 million for schools in Uganda.

Wood said this money has gone toward funding the construction and renovation of 10 schools in northern Uganda.

He said the money goes toward several different uses in the schools, depending on the individual needs of the schools. Some require better water processing systems while others require more teachers or better dormitory facilities.

Suggs said Eastern’s group currently comprises about 30 members, but said she expects this number to grow as word of the group spreads.

As membership in each of the college and high school groups in the U.S. grows, so does the influence of Invisible Children on the events in northern Uganda.

Wood said the Invisible Children group has had a definite effect on the education system in Uganda and may have helped the peace accords, which are now being discussed in the country.

He said four of the five major points in the negotiations between the two sides have been agreed upon and a tentative cease-fire is now in effect, bringing the country closer to peace than it has been in 20 years.

“This is the closest they have ever been to being successful at making peace,” Wood said.

The effect Invisible Children has caused may be credited not only to the efforts of schools in the U.S. but also to the thousands of people across America who support peace in Uganda.

Wood said nearly 80,000 people have participated in Invisible Children-sponsored protests and demonstrations nationwide over the past two years.

“When that many people raise their voices,it really has an impact,” he said.