Watching the documentary “Invisible Children” moved Bishop Lynch High School graduate Lauren Ernst so much that she founded a Bishop Lynch branch of the same-named international club.
The purpose of the Invisible Children organization is to help school children in Northern Uganda continue to get an education despite living in a war-torn country. Ernst learned about the plight of these children as a Bishop Lynch senior. Her fundraising efforts, which brought in more than $20,000, earned her a trip to Uganda to witness the situation for herself.
Ernst distinctly remembers the journey to Kampala, Uganda.
“The city was really crowded, and there was a lot of pollution,” she says. “The people there noticed us right away … we really stood out.”
Ernst says it took six hours on rough and unpaved roads to get to Gulu, where their sister school, Pabbo Secondary School, was located. At the school, she and the other Bishop Lynch students were greeted by traditional African dancers.
“I ate the local food, went to restaurants, and spent the day with an Invisible Children mentor,” Ernst says. “They cooked a fried fish dinner with some potatoes.”
It was a fun experience, she says, but it was accompanied by some culture shock.
“We had to wear pants that covered our knees,” Ernst says. “We could not take pictures there either. A lot of children were afraid of us and didn’t know how to react to white people. And they didn’t know how to do a high five.”
Since her trip, Ernst has kept in touch with some of her new friends on Facebook. She’s now a freshman at the University of Oklahoma and plans to major in nursing. The Bishop Lynch branch of Invisible Children that Ernst inaugurated is still going strong today, says Kristin Mannari, the high school’s communications director. In fact, last semester Bishop Lynch hosted the fall tour of the Invisible Children’s road show, during which representatives from the organization were on the Bishop Lynch campus presenting screenings of their new movie while also promoting the “Schools for Schools” campaign, through which Ernst was able to make her trip.
