Invisible Children Lobby Days June 22nd-23rd

***Just arrived in Fort Collins yesterday afternoon, a place we called home for the past 4 years. We will spend the next 4 days relaxing and just catching up with our friends before we part and seek new adventures in life. We apologize that the blog hasn't been updated, but the places we were riding through in Wyoming didn't have Wifi connections. In the next few days with a lot of time off we will update the blog for the past 7 days.......so stayed tuned!***

This entry is kind of a reflection of the past month or so on the road....

I wanted to thank everyone for their support, prayers, and words of inspiration. We have been on the road for over a month and had nothing but positive interactions with people in the small towns we pass through. A lot of people are curious for the reasons we decided to bike across America and we tell them the story about Invisible Children and the Child Soldiers. I've noticed that it isn't necessarily imporantant how many things or money a person possesses or how little a someone has in their name. It doesn't matter which of the 50 different states we live in, which each state or region of the country could bring different cultural barries, different perspectives on economic or politicial issues, different means on to resolve health crisis, and different views on ways the US should handle international matters. What unifies us as a country is that we all have a good heart and want to help each other out in many ways we possibly can.

On June 22nd-23rd Invisible Children had a Lobby Days in Washington DC to lobby senators and congress man for the The LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act 2009, or Senate Bill 1067 that was presented to the House by Senator Russell Feingold and partner Sam Brownback. Thousands of young Americans had over 300 meetings with policy makers into sponsoring this bill so the president could approve and pass the bill. The bill says the Obama Administration should come up with a regional strategy within 6 months to guide U.S. support—which includes political economic, intelligence and military support—for a multilateral effort to protect civilians and permanently end the threat posed by the LRA. Futhermore, Ugandan government address the conditions of how the LRA became so powerful, that why its imporatant to also rebuild northern Uganda’s institutions and addressing political and economic grievances. This will help to insure the surest safeguard against future violence and instability.

During the Lobby Days, 91 senators heard the bill. 8 senators have already committed into sponosoring it and 12 members of Congress. The momentum is still strong and hope to see more senators sponsoring the bill.