Question & Answer:

Invisible Children, a charitable organization that advocates for children’s human rights, recently became the subject of controversy. The group’s work includes production of a documentary on Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a group that uses children as soldiers.

But of its $8.9 million budget in 2011, only 37 percent of donations actually go to programs in Africa, according to Invisible Children’s financial statements. Furthermore, Invisible Children’s co-founder, Jason Russell, was detained after authorities said they found him walking around a San Francisco neighborhood wearing nothing but underpants and speaking incoherently, the Huffington Post reported.

Given recent developments, is Invisible Children still an organization you would support?

Joshua Niforatos
Senior
Biology

“I’m not saying Invisible Children is bad, but if you’re only giving 30 percent of the money to stop the Lord’s Resistance Army, I think there’s other maybe more effective organizations. There’s a lot of organizations you can support like World Vision that does development work and stuff like that.”

Emma Pindra
Freshmen
Biology

“I would, because at least there is some money going to the cause itself, so yes I would.

Daniel Torres
Senior
Psychology

“Yea, because it’s the cause that counts. You have to divorce the person from what happens outside of what he does, because the goals of the organization are particularly to make him (Kony) famous to draw attention to who he is and what he’s doing, I think 36 percent is quite a bit, because you can throw 100 percent of funds at this, but if nobody knows who Kony is it’s not going to amount to anything in the long run.”

Tomas Chavez
Sophmore
Business

“Its not just his orgs it’s other people’s as well. It’s still better than nothing.”