Liz Bassler (far right) and some of her Invisible Children SoCal Roadie team members.
A wise person once told me, “It’s good to have all kinds of friends, but you also should find your tribe: the people who think like you. Once you find your tribe, only then will you feel truly at home.”
With time, I realized that my problem was that my tribe is spread across the world. They are digging their hands into the important social projects of our time…and the tribal members that I do find in my area never stay for long.
We are nomadic people, my people.
We are always moving onto the next big thing.
There is always someone, somewhere who needs our help, and of course, we can’t help them all, but if we can do a little bit everywhere, it sort of makes us feel like we are…[helping everyone].
Perpetually separated by my tribe as I may be – and many of us are (with the exception of technological communications, Thank God for Internet) – I am lucky to have what I have:
a true tribal best friend.
We were both initiated into the adult world together, complete war paint and Guinness, and we continue to rely on each other – albeit long distance – for motivation, support, and humor in our quest to make the world a better place. Recently, I sat down with my tribal best friend (Tribal Name: Raptor Girl, Real Name: Elizabeth “Liz” Bassler) after a year apart. We compared all of the mad adventures that we had been on since then and there was one of her stories in particular that I want to share with Social Earth. I hope that she will inspire you in the same way that she continues to inspire me…
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“I was stuck in a van for three months,” Liz explained, flopping onto my bed upon arrival at my flat.
“Did you…try…opening…the door?” I joked. It was a move that I immediately regretted because I knew she was about to tell me something beautiful and selfless and that I would look like a prick…
And she did.
“Ha-ha,” she said. “No…I was working as a roadie for Invisible Children.”
Invisible Children (IC) is a media-based organization focused on ending the longest running war in Africa, rebuilding the war-torn regions of Northern Uganda, and giving scholarships to students in need. According to their website, the job of the IC workers and volunteers is to act as storytellers. Their story is the horrible tale of child soldiers kidnapped from their families and placed into guerrilla leader Joseph Kony’s killing army. To bring international media attention to their cause, IC programming includes Legacy Scholarships, the Schools for Schools fundraising campaign, a teacher exchange, and the sale of Ugandan-made merchandise, such as bracelets and handbags. (Sidenote: I have the bracelet and I love it! As you can see below, it’s way more original than all those Livestrong knock-offs.)
Liz had been talking about going to Africa ever since I met her in 2007 and when she finally went in June of 2010, she was forced to leave early because of a bombing attack that happened just blocks from where she was staying in Kampala, Uganda. In that bombing, former IC roadie Nate Henn was killed.
“I decided to get involved after living in Japan for two years as an English teacher and I felt that I wasn’t doing my part. In Iwate, where I lived, it’s difficult to volunteer without fluency in the language. This left me feeling unfulfilled,” Liz explained. She made the decision to leave Japan and go to Africa to see for herself what could be done. Shortly before her trip, she had applied for the unpaid internship to become a roadie with Invisible Children.
That’s when things got crazy.
Liz arrived at headquarters in San Diego, California on August 9th 2010 and underwent five weeks of training. She was then placed on the Southern California (SoCal) Schools for Schools crew, with three other volunteers and two Ugandan advocates. The Ugandan advocates are specifically selected from IC-sponsored schools in Uganda to make the trip to the United States, based on mentor recommendations and academic performance. After training, 11 regional teams hit the road in effort to raise money for the NGO. In four months, each individual team would visit a total of 100 venues, spreading the message of IC via film screenings, talks, and face-to-face contact with the Ugandan advocates.
“That’s so rad!” I gushed. “I bet it was just like a Rolling Stones tour, except without drugs and instruments and hookers!” Yet again, my humor proved tasteless.
“Not exactly,” Liz sighed. “For starters, we ended up going through six different vehicles in three months. And I was the van maintenance person too, so I saw a lot of ‘fun.’ We also stayed at a different host home every two nights. The host families were absolutely wonderful and if we returned to that same region, they usually hosted us again. But it was also really hard after a day of traveling and talking to students to come to a new home and be a polite guest when sometimes all you really wanted to do was sleep.”
Fortunately, those six months of stress were SO worth it. Her team raised $112,824 on the road and received 203 recurring donations for scholarships to put high school/college students in school. Post-tour, the 11 teams plus the schools that competed in the money-raising competition raised over $1 million. That doesn’t include the money raised from sales/screenings on tour.
Fundraising efforts by IC roadies included Christmas caroling, baked good sales, and Livestream feeds where roadies did stupid stunts for money. (My favorite was Jess Morris being successfully suspended from a door only by duct-tape). Students involved in the Schools for Schools program organized benefit concerts, “free dress days” at private schools, dodgeball tournaments, and private screenings at their places of worship, among other activities. The school who raised the most money in their region even won a free trip to send two students to Uganda to see the results of their hard work.
Just a peek at the stunning IC website and videos gives you an idea of the sleek media-machine that is behind this successful organization, but talking to Liz provides a more realistic view of what it’s like to work for an NGO: blood, sweat, and tears, baby. Not every day on the road was fun and games and three months of travel definitely took a toll on the group dynamic at times, but they pulled through it. And listening to Liz then, as she radiated good vibes from my flat in Bilbao, we both knew she had done the right thing. In fact, she and her IC teammates had done an incredible thing for an incredible cause.
“Empowering students with the chance to change the lives of others was absolutely the most rewarding aspect of my internship,” Liz concluded.
As for me, watching my tribal best friend empower students with the chance to change the lives of others is one of the most rewarding aspects of our friendship. We all have heroes that we look up to, but it’s truly something special when you get to see your peers – (yes, the same people you used to get drunk with in college) – make amazing contributions to society. It makes you realize: “If they can do that, I can too.” And in truth, it is everyone’s social responsibility.
How can you support IC?
Liz says: “The easiest way to help now is to join the free, upcoming event called 25. Since the unfortunate death of Nate Henn in the World Cup Uganda bombing, IC has been struggling to find a way to follow the Lord’s Resistance Army into Dominican Republic of Congo and build radio towers as early alert systems for people in remote villages. So, they have combined the unfortunate event and their promise to build radio towers into one fundraising event. One of the most effective ways of helping is also spreading the word! Tell people what’s happening and direct them to the IC website. There’s so much to be done, but it all starts with information.”
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