The energy: electrifying. The people: humble heroes. The cause: to end Africa’s longest running war.
This past summer 700 young minds took over the University of San Diego in our effort to change the world.
The event was called The Fourth Estate, a tribute to what was considered the lowest class in France during the Revolution.
Despite having everything stacked against them, the people that made up The Fourth Estate were eventually successful in their mission for social change.
Invisible Children is an organization accredited with being the driving force against Joseph Kony and terrorist-rebel group called the Lord’s Resistance Army that has been wreaking havoc and terror across central Africa for the past twenty-five years.
By putting together this conference loaded with motivational and educational speakers, Invisible Children strove to emulate the main ideas of the original Fourth Estate.
There’s something so magical about being in the presence of 700 other people who are all fighting the same fight.
There I was—in a sea of strangers—but I never felt more connected to anything in my life.
After talking to the people around me, I discovered nearly everyone felt this way.
During our short four-day stay, we listened to 12 guest speakers, among them the President of the International Justice Mission, and a man by the name of Carl Wilkins who was the one and only American to stay in Rwanda during the genocide in 1994.
The speakers touched us, inspired us, and most importantly pushed us to keep on keeping on.
“Fourth Estaters” as we’re called, began referring to our experience as being “on the mountain top” after listening to a recording of one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last speeches in which he describes the blissful feeling of being part of a force united against injustice as just that—being so high up on that mountain that no one can touch you, nothing can bring you down.
The Fourth Estate was our mountaintop: there we were, 700 strong, and there was no one there to doubt us, no one there to judge us, and no one there to put us down.
In a culture where kids and teenagers are often treated as burdens, this change was shocking and so refreshing.
We were constantly being told that we are making a difference and we will continue to make a difference.
On the first day we were told the 700 of us had raised an estimated 3.8 million dollars for Invisible Children in the past two years.
Cheers erupted, tears were shed, and encouragement was thrust upon us.
This moment cemented in my head that we really are doing something.
The conference was an extraordinary learning experience that I am very thankful to have partaken in and will remember forever.