by PATRICK LEJTENYI

For Andrea Charbonneau, a 22-year-old Torontonian, and Farah Williamson, a 21-year-old Briton, the ongoing atrocities in northern Uganda constituted a tragedy that needed exposure. In particular, the plight of the thousands of Acholi children, known as the “night commuters” because, every night and every morning, they trek from their villages to the relative safety of large urban centres and back to escape the brutal civil war ravaging the area. Joseph Kony, the leader of the rebel militia known as the Lord’s Resistance Army, is a messianic madman, and his followers, many of them children, have a fearsome reputation built on kidnapping, torturing and killing unprotected villagers. In October 2005, the UN International Criminal Court issued its first-ever arrest warrant for Kony.

On exchange to McGill from Warwick University last year, Williamson met Charbonneau and the pair bonded over their shared concern for this particular forsaken piece of Africa. Williamson, the daughter of a British diplomat father and a Ugandan mother of East Indian descent, grew up in the country, as well as in other troubled East African hotspots, notably Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Charbonneau grew up in the comfort of Toronto, but the endless parade of horrors appearing on TV news instilled in her a desire for action at a young age.

Last year, they hit on something attainable: a shelter for Ugandan children. They would call it the Shelter Wakadogo (Swahili meaning “for the little ones”) and it would provide health, food, education, training and a little fun, a rare commodity in Gulu, the regional capital.

“It became clear to us that we both had the same mission and goal in life,” says Williamson. “But this really has grown into something immense.” There are now Wakadogo chapters at McGill, Warwick and Waterloo University, and at a high school in Alberta.

Allies and apathy high and low

They registered as a student club at McGill and are in the process of applying for registered charity status. But in the meantime, they are raising funds, and raising awareness, through parties and events like last fall’s Gulu Walk Day. They’ve approached high-level government officials in Canada and Uganda for help, and, to their surprise, often received it. Their Board of Governors consists of Ugandan-born Canadian Senator Mobina Jaffer and Rosaline Murray, Canada’s former ambassador to Ethiopia. Uganda’s High Commissioner to Canada, Cissy Taliwaku, is on the Board of Advisors.

Early last July, says Charbonneau, Jaffer “offered us any and all help she could. This was a turning point, because now we had backing. She was the first legitimate, well, adult to tell me I can do this. And that whipped up this insane confidence.”

It may help some that the situation in northern Uganda is finally being discussed more widely in popular media. Articles in newspapers and magazines are being written and photo spreads exhibited, so there is some momentum to the global campaign. “Since we’ve started, I’ve noticed a big change in what people know,” says Williamson.

But that hasn’t translated into massive numbers of people wanting to get involved. “I feel very alone in the U.K.,” says Williamson, who describes Warwick and many of its students as “very investment-banking-oriented.”

Charbonneau says that “a lot of people put their hands up” when asked about volunteering, but few follow through. “At the beginning I felt alone, but I’ve learned a lot about leadership,” she says. “Not everyone is as invested in this as we are.”

But Charbonneau and Williamson are all too aware that overcoming apathy is hard, and not only in Canada and the U.K. “People in Kampala [Uganda’s capital] don’t really care about the north,” says Williamson. “But I have had Ugandan women coming up to me in tears because they can’t believe someone from the outside actually cares about their country.”

They need $100,000 to get the project off the ground. To help, visit www.shelterwakadogo.org.