Creating Peace from a Distance:
Two University of Notre Dame alums launch a worldwide campaign to end violence in Uganda
By Erica Schlaikjer
Sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands.
“We did it because no one else was doing it, and we understood how serious [the problem] was,” says 24-year-old Michael Poffenberger, co-founder of Resolve Uganda, an international advocacy group dedicated to ending the 20-year armed conflict in northern Uganda. “I’m committed to this until the war ends.”
Poffenberger and his classmate, Peter Quaranto, started the organization after studying abroad in Uganda with the School for International Training’s (S.I.T.) Development Studies program. While in Africa, they interviewed religious people, soldiers, and victims of war. It was the first time they encountered displaced persons, malnutrition, and other effects of genocide. Poffenberger says the experience altered his post-graduation plans.
As a student of anthropology and peace studies, Poffenberger expected to spend life after college traveling and doing “cultural immersion.” But instead he is leading a worldwide grassroots movement. Resolve Uganda—originally known as the Uganda Conflict Action Network (Uganda-CAN)—has held briefings before Congress, met with U.S. State Department officials, and organized nationwide events. The group’s April 2007 “Displace Me” campaign involved more than 59,000 people in 15 U.S. cities who committed to sleeping outside to attract media attention and pay tribute to the 1.4 million internally displaced individuals in Uganda.
“It’s been an adventure, that’s for sure,” Poffenberger says.
Learning from Experience
Poffenberger’s adventure started in Kampala, where he lived with a middle-class family. His homestay mom was a banker; her husband was a politician. They had six children. Their time together gave him an opportunity to connect his academic skills to real-life situations.
“It provided the space to have really good and meaningful, constructive conversations,” Poffenberger says.
One such conversation about the parallels between the Rwandan genocide and the war in northern Uganda inspired Poffenberger and his classmate Quaranto to create Uganda-CAN. Poffenberger’s host family talked about dead bodies floating downstream from Rwanda into Ugandan lakes and rivers, and yet most southern Ugandans knew very little about the devastation.
“It spurred my curiosity and helped me want to learn more and explore more about what was going on in the north,” Poffenberger says.
The original Uganda-CAN online resource and blog compiled current events, news analysis, and policy recommendations. After Poffenberger graduated in 2005, he moved to Washington, D.C. to spend more time developing the website, with support from the Africa Faith and Justice Network, a social advocacy organization. Meanwhile, Quaranto worked from Notre Dame’s campus as he finished his senior year.
In April 2007, the organization beefed up its finances, organizational structure, and human resources, changing its name to Resolve Uganda. The group is now more focused on grassroots action, using a two-pronged approach of coalition-building and creating action toolkits to get people involved in ending the conflict. Other organizations, such as Oxfam and Invisible Children, have offered their support to develop policy analysis and tools for activism.
Meanwhile, Poffenberger and Quaranto continue to fight against “the legacy of international neglect that has allowed the war in northern Uganda to continue.”
As someone who was originally attracted to Uganda because of the positive stories he heard from fellow students, Poffenberger has this piece of advice for future visitors: “Listen as much as possible and use the experience to look at the world through somebody else’s eyes. Allow that to impact how you live your life and how you see the world.” AV
Erica Schlaikjer, editor-at-large of Abroad View, graduated from Northwestern University in March 2007 with a double-major in journalism and international studies.