Last month, I wrote about the amazing new RAISE Hope for the Congo CD. Proceeds from the albums sold will go toward helping people of the Congo—particularly women and girls—escape the violence that occurs there on a daily basis due to genocide. The genocide itself, of course, is money-related—surrounding the control of the country’s minerals used to produce products such as computers and cell phones.

There are other ways to help stop this violent horror rather than buying music, of course. One way to do so is to get your campus to go conflict-free. As the RAISE Hope for the Congo website says, “Colleges spend hundreds of thousands of dollars investing in new forms of technology each year and have influential partnerships with electronics companies.” This is a great reason to make sure that your college doesn’t buy products that were made with blood money.

The continuous rape, murder, and mutilation of the Congo people over this $180 million mineral trade industry has to be stopped—and one of the best ways we can stop such things is to issue a boycott of such products. People with cash registers for hearts don’t give a damn about your vote or your voice; it’s your money they are after. And when they don’t get that money, they don’t have a way to keep perpetuating their abuse.

RAISE Hope for the Congo has an entire toolkit you can use to help make your campus conflict free. Get together some friends, or make it a project of your organization (maybe you have an Amnesty International chapter on campus?), and start boycotting the violence now.

With RAISE Hope’s kit, you can start by hosting a teach-in about the violence in the Congo and why it’s so important that we not support it monetarily. These why’s are so important; they are the people of the Congo, and they are at the heart of the campaign. If we turn a blind eye to them in favor of our gizmos and gadgets, we lose our own humanity in the process as they lose their own to the daily violence they now expect. There is also information on how to get a speaker to come to your school if you’d rather do a presentation that way.

Next, you can get your university to pledge to not support conflict minerals or the products that contain them. Ask your college to stop buying them whenever possible, and to only buy conflict-free products when they are available. A resource kit also exists at the site to help you along with this important step.

College is a place for self-discovery, education, and an increase in global awareness. What better place is there to start a movement for peace in the Congo?