The Affero Blog

Unaccompanied Minors pt 2

By Steven McLaughlin in News

07Aug, 2010

For the last two weeks I have struggled to put pen to paper (or to tap out my thoughts on a keyboard) regarding how I would wrap up my two-part piece on child soldiers. There seems to be so much information on this subject alone that I felt there was no way I am going to do it any justice.

On top of this I recently started a new job at work that has been eating up my free time like the Dilophosaurus chewed up Wayne Knight in Jurassic Park. That isn’t to say I don’t love my new job, on the contrary I do, however my writing has suffered in the past two weeks and been pushed to the back burner, and for that I apologize.

The third reason that I have struggled to finish this piece is that as a writer I tend to lean heavily towards being a comedy writer, and the fact of the matter is, the more I read and researched the dilemma of child soldiers, the less and less I found ways to make any sort of light hearted remarks regarding the issue. Face it; even the Dilophosaurus joke in the last paragraph was a bit of a stretch.

For these reasons among others I decided that I could not finish this piece on my own. Fortunately my friend (and co-affangelist) Mr. Rob Harvey pointed me in the direction of one Mr. Marcus Young. Marcus Young not only came to my rescue in helping me finish this piece, but he taught me more about the experiences of a child soldier than any book or article possibly could. Marcus and I had a great at length conversation regarding a group he has worked with for several years called Project AK-47.

Before I spout off about what Project Ak-47 is doing I have to precede it by saying that at the center of Marcus’ story of how he came to be involved with rescuing children from places such as Mexico, Burma and the Philippines is a man who very much so leans on Jesus in his life.

In short Project AK47 reaches into the depths of poverty and pulls out kids who weren’t given a fair first shot at having a childhood. Sure we could go back and forth and debate what it means to have a childhood, we could discuss how my Western idea of childhood differs from a world view of childhood, or even argue that there’s no such thing as a world view of child hood. We could do all that until we’re blue in the face, but the fact will still remain that kids as young as 3 and 4 are conscripted by their governments into militias. They start out as “go fers” running menial errands here and there, during this time they sometimes have food, clothing and shelter provided for them. Around the ages of 9 and 10 they start training the children in basic combat, and then at about 12 years old they join the ranks of other soldiers. At 12 they are physically large enough to carry the light, deadly and relatively cheap weapon that is an AK-47. The average time these children spend in some sort of paramilitary role on average is 7 years.

So yes, we could argue about what it means to “have” a childhood, but I’m willing to bet there are very few people that would wish the above paragraph on any child. What project Ak-47 does is to step in when given the chance and provide these kids with the food, clothing and shelter they need, but with the relationships they as children yearn for as well. The over arching idea behind Project AK-47 is that the children in these situations have two chances in life; to be a kid for 7 years or to be a killer for 7 years. A(a) kid (k)for (4) 7 or a(a) killer(k) for (4) 7. AK-47.

I think that if I were a sensationalistic writer I would reprint the parts of mine and Marcus’ conversation that shocked me the most, the parts that broke my heart and the parts that spurred me on. But that’s not my writing style and I don’t want to scare anyone into finding out more about this mission of Project AK-47. So here are my suggestions if you want to find out more or get involved with alleviating this darkness from our world.

1)    Sign up for Affero (yeah, I went there.) Seriously though, sign up and vote for child soldiers to get your gift for the month. It can be that easy.

2)    Go to Project AK 47′s website and get involved there. Read about their dog tag campaign. Their goal is to get 100,000 dog tags of child soldiers out to people to raise awareness of just how many children are in the bondage of armies, militias and other various groups. While you’re there look around and learn more about Project AK-47

3)    Go to a library and type child soldiers into a search bar on the computer. The vast array of books and articles on the subject can lead to some great conversations and breakthroughs on this subject if you take the time to read them.

That’s it for me for the week. Thanks for your recent patience and I promise more regularity in the future when it comes to this column.

Peace,

Steve

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