During the 2017 Social Justice Week Rockhurst students teamed up to help students in Uganda receive a Jesuit education of their own as the east African country continues to recover from years of conflict.

Every Social Justice Week, which ran this year from March 18-24, the student organization Voices for Justice picks a philanthropic cause and sets fundraising goals that they feel will help make a global difference.

This year, Voices for Justice hoped to raise enough money to send 22 students to Uganda to attend Ocer Campion Jesuit College for a year. The student group set a fundraising goal of $8,000, and created a campaign page on the YouCaring.com crowdsourcing website to collect and track donations.

As of April 3, Rockhurst has raised $7,404.

According to a Rockhurst press release, Ocer Campion Jesuit College provides students in the rural areas of Uganda a place to learn and strives to serve the people suffering from years of violence and struggle.

It is important to understand why Ocer Campion Jesuit College was chosen. According to Ocer’s website, the northern region of Uganda has been marginalized for years. As a result, nearly 30,000 children have been abducted and many more have been abused or killed by Joseph Kony’s army.

For those who remember the Internet phenomenon of Kony 2012, that is the same Joseph Kony. For those who don’t, Kony is the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group largely composed of brainwashed children that terrorized Uganda from the early 1990s through the mid-2000s, and more recently its neighboring nations. As NBC News reported last month, the hunt for Kony still continues. The LRA’s raids and attacks led many people to flee to Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, forcing them to live their lives in disarray.

In today’s world, the thought of peace in Uganda is finally nearing, and education is an excellent beginning for rebuilding the future of the Ugandan community. Ocer Campion Jesuit College strives to aid in that change.

Voices for Justice has encouraged not only individual donations, but it also turned during Social Justice Week to Rockhurst’s Greek organizations to each sponsor a different student, with a unified goal of $350 per Greek chapter.

Allison Crecelius, the Director of Philanthropy for Zeta Tau Alpha, said that a Voices for Justice student representative gave a presentation for each of the six chapters about the fundraiser.

“Sometimes in the rush of all that is college, I think we forget how lucky we are to have the opportunity of higher education. It would be great to see another student impacted from a good education,” Crecelius said.

“I think it is a very humbling experience to give to a young person who might not get to go to school if it weren’t for my contribution,” she added.

Crecelius also mentioned how excited her ZTA chapter was for this opportunity. In the past they had done a similar project raising money for a girl’s school supplies in Kansas City. Crecelius said that the Ocer fundraiser was attention-grabbing because of the way many take education for granted in America.

“In many parts of the world, education is not a given, it is a privilege that only a few receive,” Crecelius said.