Unite for Children
Uganda Rising
Mindset Media
Acumen Fund
War Affected Children
Disaster Relief
Hunger Relief

War Affected Children

Alison Lawton's efforts on behalf of war affected children include GuluWalk (2005), commitments made at the Clinton Global Initiative and her participation in the War Affected Children Conference.

GuluWalk (2005)
(www.guluwalk.com)

In northern Uganda, 40,000 youth leave their families each night to avoid abduction by LRA soldiers. As the sun sets, children as young as 4 years old walk for hours to sleep in dangerous city streets and shelters because anywhere is safer than home.

In July of 2005, two Canadians, Adrian Bradbury and Kieran Hayward, started GuluWalk to better understand the ordeal of the "night commuters" of northern Uganda. Every evening for 31 days, they walked 12.5 km into downtown Toronto to sleep in front of city hall. After only 4 hours of sleep, they trekked home at sunrise to work full-time and attempt to maintain their daily routines.

The worldwide response to GuluWalk (2005) resulted in GuluWalk Day. On October 22, over 15,000 people in 38 cities worldwide took international steps to tell the story of northern Ugandan children. GuluWalk has grown into an urgent, impassioned worldwide movement for peace.

Through Mindset Media, Alison Lawton is an advocacy and media partner of GuluWalk. To raise awareness, she funded the development of GuluWalk's promotional merchandise and produced a call-to-action video clip narrated by renowned Canadian singer/songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk.

Clinton Global Initiative
(www.clintonglobalinitiative.org)

From September 15-17, 2005, Alison Lawton attended the Clinton Global Initiative, a unique nonpartisan conference held in New York. The event brought together a diverse and select group of current and former heads of state, business leaders, noteworthy academicians and key NGO representatives for a series of dynamic interactive workshops.

The 800 attendees included almost 50 heads of state, business leaders such as Lakshmi Mittal and Bill Gates, and media figures like Robert Murdoch, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie and Mick Jagger. Focused on solutions to issues like poverty, religious strife, governance and climate change, outcomes of the conference included the establishment of a $100 million joint foundation to work on the alleviation of poverty and over $2 billion in commitments to address global problems.

Representing Mindset Media, Alison committed to the donation of capital and actions that included the Act for Stolen Children Campaign.

War Affected Children Conference:
Quest Series for Global Citizens

The WACC was a two day conference held at the University of Winnipeg in September of 2005. Centered on the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child and Canada's foreign and domestic policies, the conference examined the true effectiveness of these initiatives in stopping the abduction of child soldiers and assisting survivors of war.

As a key speaker, Alison Lawton provided a situational overview on northern Uganda and discussed how individuals and organizations can work collectively to raise international awareness of the crisis and translate it into action.