Inspired by a story of a child inadvertently finding out the shocking truth about Santa Claus, Deb Morrison challenged us to create something, anything, about the loss of innocence. Immediately I thought of something that we had been talking about in my international class – child soldiers in Africa. With Blood Diamond bringing the conflict into the mainstream media consciousness, the eyes of the world have once again turned toward Africa. I spent some time looking into a NGO called Invisible Children.

It’s an amazing organization with a unique story. It started as a trip to Africa that three filmmakers untook in search of a story. The footage that they came back with was shocking, horrifying and inspiring. After showing the rough cut to family and friends, the overwhelming response was, how can I help? From that they built their organization on the mission to turn apathy into activism. It has developed into a really innovative campaign that has integrated all types of social media. They have an amazing website as well as a blog, newsletter and an online store. The campaign has even caught the attention of multiple celebrities who have acted as spokespeople.

So for my project, I created a print ad for Invisible Children. I found a really great picture of a child soldier from Uganda. What drew me in were his eyes. They looked sad and hopeful at the same time. I wanted to really emphasize the eyes so I took out all the color except for in his eyes. Because one of the main goals is to offer hope, I made that the slogan.

Here is my final project: