What's a typical meeting like?

These meetings are easier than you think. You don't need to have a PhD to tell your elected leader about why you care about this issue, and that they should too. Here's how it usually goes:

1. You introduce yourself and the purpose of your visit.
2. You give brief comments on why people in your state or district are concerned about this crisis.
3. The Member of Congress (or their staff) you meet with will ask you questions about what's going on and share their views.
4. You inform them of the specific policy requests you have, which are provided by Resolve Uganda ahead of time.
5. You thank them for their time, get their business card, and stay in touch as the issue progresses!

The whole thing is usually over in around half an hour. If you want to read about how meetings went during the first Knock Knock campaign in 2007, click here.

You will be meeting with either your member of Congress or someone on his or her staff. While Senators and Representatives try to accommodate as many constituent meeting requests as possible while they're in their home districts, sometimes they have to delegate meetings to their staff. If this is the case, don't worry: members of Congress typically rely heavily on their staffs in the development of their foreign policy agendas and you can be sure your member of Congress will hear about your meeting.

How much the person you'll be meeting with already knows about this conflict depends on your district and member of Congress. If your Senator or Representative sits on one of the Foreign Relation committees, they will probably have a good idea of what's going on. Also, if people in your district took part Invisible Children's Global Night Commute or Displace Me, or any of the GuluWalks, then your member of Congress also should know something about the conflict.

To learn what your Member of Congress has done on this issue before you head into the meeting, click here to look at the grade they have on our Congressional Scorecard. If your elected representative has below a C, it's probably a safe bet that they don't know very much about what's going on. You can bring up this grade in the meeting as a way to encourage them to do more!