Thousands of students spent last night in cardboard boxes in a field at the University of Central Florida in an attempt to call attention to the war and inhumane conditions in Northern Uganda.
It's a worldwide movement called Displace Me, run by the non-profit group Invisible Children, and as News 13's Karen Castillo shows us, many woke up with a whole new perspective in life.
As the sun rises, so do 5,000 students at the University of Central Florida.
The African music is not their traditional wake up call. Then again, nothing here is traditional. These students from all over Central Florida are participating in an event to promote awareness of a 20 year war in Africa.
"In Northern Uganda, to escape from a rebel army, children commute from their villages miles every night to sleep on the ground for fear from being abducted and taken into the night," Will Boyd of Invisible Children said.
To try and begin empathizing with the children, they slept on a sheet, damp from the morning dew, above them a cardboard box. They shared crackers for food and marked their shirts with an X to show they're invisible. Many of the boxes actually wilted or fell apart overnight; that was a lesson to many folks here.
"Our temporary housing it only lasts one night,” said volunteer Beth Wheeler. “Those children in Uganda they don't have it. They are sleeping in the streets and they are sleeping in whatever shelter they can find."
"The thing I kept thinking about was that I get to go home I get to leave this,” said volunteer Kristen Cass. “This isn't my reality but it is someone's reality and they are having to endure this everyday."
These students are lucky. They get to wake up from war after just one night. Invisible Children estimates nearly 1,000 people are dying each week in displacement camps in Uganda because of a dependence on foreign aid and a lack of food and water, and many of those are children.
“We think over the last 20 years, 65,000 children between the ages of five and 12 have been abducted from their homes, kidnapped and forced to be child soldiers,” Boyd said.
Orlando is one of 15 sites across the country hosting tens of thousands of people who are participating in this event.
At UCF, Karen Castillo, Central Florida News 13.