This post comes from Shannon Vance, Bradley University student and Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Action Campaign Team Member.
If you ever want to have your art skills tested, apply to present at a conference. Suddenly all those years of coloring outside the lines and avoiding the art studio are coming back to haunt you. I’m only kidding of course, but this is house I felt when I realized two months later I would be presenting on Child Soldiers at the Midwest Regional Conference for Amnesty International.
Let me back up. The International Humanitarian Law Action Campaign (associated with the American Red Cross) on Bradley’s campus started last fall and created a simulation on child soldiers the spring I was in Denmark. This simulation reached hundreds of students and was nationally recognized by National Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Bradley students stood among the few schools that were recognized at a conference in early June where they had the chance to present their activity. August comes around and two of my fellow team members and I were approached to present our campaign’s success at this Amnesty International conference. All I was thinking was “This is going to be so cool! An Amnesty International conference!!” In other words, I was geeking out.
Flash forward to the evening of October 24th and we had spent several hours making a trifold poster, gathering materials to pass out and figuring out ways we could make our presentation interactive. We decided to focus heavily on social media because of our use of the hashtag WarhasLimits we used during our campaign. Our hope was that we could begin a regional discussion on how war does have limits and specifically in regard to child soldiers. Geared and ready to go, we hoped in a car and drove the 2 and a half hours at 6 am on the morning of the 25th. The morning started off wonderfully with each of us spilling something on our pants- Coffee on Jessica, Powdered Doughnut on Cazzie and yogurt on myself. We arrived in downtown St. Louis and said goodbye to the beautiful weather before heading inside the Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center.
We were part of the “Action Alley”, a new component to the conference this year where attendees could walk through an expo of sorts and learn about other activists’ work-hence why we showed up ready to present on the issue of child soldiers and the campaign we held last semester. Our booth (which is pictured below) was easily knocked everyone else’s out of the park and we heard nothing but good things about it. The “expo” itself wasn’t exactly what we had expected (turns out only 6 tables applied) but we were able to reach out and talk to a number of young Amnesty advocates. We spent sometime talking to a group from Illinois Wesleyan and once they left, they were completely sold on doing an IHL campaign on their campus. We also had a chance to speak with a professor at one of the University of Wisconsin schools and upon hearing our speech, he said “You guys should partner with the Red Cross! This is the stuff they would love!” Well imagine his surprise when we told him we already had. We got one giant pat on the back for that.
Our booth- complete with child soldier cutouts for people to sign.
In an attempt to begin that “regional discussion” I mentioned previously a Facebook event was created (which can be found if you search ‘AI Child Soldiers’) and we took pictures of people signing our child soldier cutouts or holding up a whiteboard with a pledge of sorts on it- examples include “Playgrounds not battlefields” or “Toys not guns”. The Facebook event was also flooded with facts and figures about child soldiers. While we had hoped it would have made splash in the social media pond, we’re glad that we at least got to get our feet wet with holding a social media campaign and we’re all confident that the people we talked to will start a discussion with their friends and fellow activists at home.
Cazzie, myself and Jessica in front of our booth
Having the chance to present at an Amnesty International regional conference will forever be one of the coolest things in college I did. Thank goodness I was able to get it in before the highly anticipated May 17th shows up. This was just the first step for us to be able to show a larger public the cool things the Red Cross and our campaign team has been able to do-even though we’re a small university. Although, the next time the three of us present at a conference we’re all going to have to bring a second pair of pants…
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