The original website, including the blog and all its content, are gone. Sorry.
Maybe some day I'll put up more info about the cause and the trip up in this space, or turn it into something else. Until then, this is it.
It's the longest-running war in Africa. Joseph Kony's rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), have been abducting tens of thousands of children for decades. Originally located in Northern Uganda, the rebels have spread into neighbouring Central African Republic, Sudan, and the Democratic of the Congo.
Invisible Children is an innovative and effective organization geared toward ending this war and supporting the thousands of children affected.
I first found out about child soldiers from the organization Invisible Children while in high school. I thought it was crazy that it had taken me so long to find out about such an unbeleivable issue, and figured more people needed to know about it.
On April 11th 2009, I hopped on my wheel in Victoria, British Columbia, beginning a 79 day self-supported unicycling journey across the country to Ottawa, Ontario. "Self-Supported" here means I was out there by myself carying everything I needed on my back. But I found incredible support along the way, and the trip would have been impossible (or at least terribly miserable), and totally unsuccessful without the awesome support from back home.
4,700km and 1.7 million pedal-strokes later, I'd raised a bit of money and gotten some attention for the issue. The primary goal of the tour was to raise awareness. The result: direct, high-engagement interactions with hundreds of people I met along the way, plus four television spots covering the issue, a bunch of radio interviews, and over 30 newspaper articles.
The LRA is still active today. Supporting Invisible Children is a great way to help end the use of child soldiers by the LRA: invisiblechildren.com.
In 2010 I helped organize another cycling tour called Child Soldier Cycle. 2,200km from Ottawa to the east coast of Canada, we rode with the exclusive goal of raising awareness (no donations accepted!): ChildSoldierCycle.ca.
In early 2010 I gave a talk about big numbers and unicycling across Canada at the first ever youth-oriented TED event, TEDxYouthOttawa. See it on youtube.
I'm Philip Schliehauf. This website doesn't exist yet, but will some day: philipschleihauf.ca.