There has been a lot of talk over the past week about Joseph Kony, Invisible Children and what exactly we should do about the situation. The Kony 2012 video released by Invisible Children last week spurred much of the discussion and bouts of activism, but many were skeptical of the nonprofit organization's methods. Some said that Invisible Children manipulated the facts to sway their almost entirely American audience. But I think there is a bigger question here.
What about our children?
Nearly 300,000 children in the United States were at risk of being sexually exploited for commercial purposes in 2009, according to a University of Pennsylvania study, "most of them runaways or thrown-aways," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Then if you factor in homeless children and foster children who are not being taken care of properly, and you have an epidemic on your hands. The truth is that children are vulnerable, and evil people take advantage of the vulnerable in order to further their own agendas. And sadly, that is nothing new. Joseph Kony has been terrorizing villagers of central Africa for nearly 20 years. So what's all the hype about right now?
There are plenty of children in America that need our help, but no one has made a YouTube video calling attention to their plight (well, not yet anyway). What will it take for Americans to fix their own problems?
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