So Tuesday night, right after my workshop on grassroots activism convinced me that we desperately need some new paradigms for getting involved, I walked right into one.

Here’s the deal: In 2003, three young filmakers from America stumbled onto a situation in Northern Uganda that disgusted and inspired them, a 20-year-long civil war where children are the weapons, and the victims. The result was a film called, “Invisible Children: Rough Cut.”

After seeing the impact of their film worldwide, these same three guys formed an organization (www.invisiblechildren.com) to ending that war, where children are routinely hunted down and forced to fight with the rebel army as child soldiers or sex slaves. For fear of being captured by the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), these children commute on foot every night to find safe places to sleep in their town centers. Already, more than 30,000 children have been abducted and forced into this very endable civil war.

Those new-school activists have been busy lately, showing their movie and enlisting support. Some of my friends and I saw the Invisible Children movie on Tuesday night. It moved us deeply…and just in time.

This Saturday night, thousands of young people in 136 American cities will commute to designated locations to sleep outside on behalf of the invisible children of Northern Uganda, pleading for the U.S. government to help put an end to this 20-year-old travesty. Here in Cincinnati, we will be joining them.

If you can, you should do the same.