The Lincoln Log

Children of the battlefields- these children are those who have never experienced a typical childhood of sleep, laughter, and play. Instead of toys in hand, they carry guns and armor that exposes them to such a grim reality at such an early age. They grow up surrounded by violence and hate. Such catastrophes got the attention of a group of students here at Abraham Lincoln High School, who spread awareness about these atrocities that occur around the world. This is the New Global Citizens club.

They meet on Fridays at bungalow six during lunch. It is run and established by students whose goal is to release awareness about what is going on around the world and raise money for global issues. Their current topic focus is child soldiers.

Invisible Children is a nonprofit organization. Their objective is to aid child soldiers who suffered over the recent civil war in Liberia.

“The adolescent soldiers are still trying to recuperate from the effects so it’s hard for them to reintegrate into society,” said junior, Aissa Isana, one of the leaders of the club. The club is raising money that will go through Invisible Children toward those former child soldiers to build centers.

“We are raising money not just for education but also for skills that they could use in life like agriculture skills, carpentry skills, not just giving money for food or clothes, but things that they could actually use,” said Isana.

These centers were designed to help the child soldiers in several ways. Not only will they help them build life skills, but also support them to cope psychologically.

“There are kids who have been child soldiers since they were seven years old. They were forced to kill people with a gun at such a young age that it definitely gave them psychological problems,” Isana said. In order to raise money, the club planned fundraisers. One of the fundraisers is where people ask stores for a kind donation in which they do not actually ask for money but the products that the store would have.

Also, the club intends to show a film called “Invisible Children” on March 6. It is a documentary about child soldiers in New Ganda who are going through the same conditions that the children in Liberia had gone through.

“We want to raise awareness for our club and also show what other kids are going through and how lucky we have it here.” said junior, Allison Trinh, another leader of the club. There are many problems in the world, and the New Global Citizens is the club that will help to spread awareness and find ways to aid those problems.

“As being a part of the world, we can fix it, just because we’re kids, teenagers, doesn’t mean we can’t make a change because we can,” Anael Rizzo said.