Invisible Children tour stops at UCF

Agnes Aromorach can still remember the fearful nights she had to spend sleeping on the cold jungle's floor.

"It rained on me every night, and it would always be so cold and so dark, but it was the only place my parents could send me to keep me safe," she said to a large crowd on Tuesday night, as a part of Invisible Children's Frontline Tour hosted by the Darfur Awareness & Invisible Children organization at UCF.

Aromorach is a 23-year-old war survivor from Northern Uganda, who was given the chance at a better education and life for her family through the efforts of Invisible Children.

She now spends her time traveling the country telling her story to inspire activism in high school and college students.

Nearly 300 people crammed into Brooklyn Pizza to listen to her speak and to sit through a screening of Invisible Children's newest documentary "Tony," which follows one of the first children the founders of Invisible Children ever met during the war in Northern Uganda.

Aromorach's lecture and preceding screening of the documentary was DAIC's first Frontline event on behalf of Invisible Children, an organization that "uses film, creativity, and social action to end the use of child soldiers in Joseph Kony's rebel war and restore LRA-affected communities in central Africa to peace and prosperity."

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is a terrorist group responsible for one of the longest-running civil wars in Uganda's history, according to Invisible Children's website. Kony, its leader, has been behind the estimated 90 percent of children who have been abducted from their homes in Uganda and forced to become soldiers.

"Even studying at school was hard for me as a child," 23-year-old Aromorach said. "I walked to school because my family had no other means of transportation -- rebel soldiers would ambush students on the way. Every time I look back I think it was only by the grace of God that I escaped being abducted. I eventually had to drop out."

Her speech comes just weeks after President Obama announced that he would be sending 100 troops to Northern Uganda to work with the local government and help track down Kony.

"Life became so hard because of Joseph Kony," Aromorach said – many in the crowd couldn't seem to hold back their tears. "I lost all hope I had in life. I thought I had no future. And then Invisible Children stepped into my life."

Aromorach went on to say she came to the U.S. to share her story and spread the word about Invisible Children's new initiative called the Protection Plan.

"I am really grateful," she said. "But this is not about me or the children in Northern Uganda anymore. Someone else is going through what I went through. The LRA is in Sudan. They're in the Congo, in big forests that they can hide in. A displaced child doesn't have the hope of living for more than two hours - every day I was losing a friend, or a family member."

As the LRA moves from Northern Uganda into Southern Sudan and the Congo, Invisible Children's mission is to construct radio towers in remote areas that members of villages can use to alert other villages of attacks so that they can either prepare or escape.

They can also be used to help draw the thousands of child soldiers Kony uses to fight his battles out of hiding, so they know that it's safe to come out and seek refuge.

Although the LRA is moving to Southern Sudan, many Ugandan children remain displaced, and many villages are still in disrepair.

Alongside Aromorach that night was what Invisible Children likes to call "roadies" -- young volunteers who leave their lives behind to travel the U.S. and spread Invisible Children's mission -- as well as the many DAIC members facilitating the event.

"Agnes is a fascinating human being," said Josh Wolney, one of the roadies traveling the country with Aromorach. "When she was five sleeping in the jungle and running away from rebel groups, I was five in Ohio not being able to sleep in my own bed because I was afraid of the dark. The parallels of our lives are ridiculous and she's been resilient in this sea of Americans."

He and the other roadies helped raise money for the Protection Plan after Armorach's speech, selling Invisible Children merchandise like T-shirts and DVDs, as well as handbags and bracelets crafted by Ugandan women.