On Wednesday October 7, His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be making a special address at the International Campaign for Tibet’s annual Light of Truth Awards in Washington, D.C.
Each year the Light of Truth Award is presented to a person or an organization who has made significant progress toward raising awareness about the plight of Tibet and has fought for human rights and democracy for the people of Tibet.
A Tibetan butter lamp serves as the reward. (more…)
Yesterday marked the passing of Senator Edward “Ted” Moore Kennedy. Only two weeks after the death of his beloved sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, he succumbed to the malignant brain tumor he’d been diagnosed with in 2008 in his home.
The third-longest running senator in U.S. history, Kennedy was a man who fostered peace between people of all backgrounds. (more…)
It’s always nice when you hear what philanthropists celebrities are, but when they actually travel to a country in need and help out in person it shows true character.
Take Hillary Duff. Apparently the pretty youth isn’t just a TV, film and pop sensation. She’s also a humanitarian. Duff, 21, recently distributed 3,000 backpacks full of food to poor kids in the Bogota, Columbia school district with the Blessings in a Backpack program.
“We’ve been working for four years feeding children over the weekends. They invited us to come here, and we got our first school in Bogota,” says Duff, who has been a part of the program for over four years.
She has actually helped to start this program, along with USA Harvest founder Stan Curtis. The idea is to distribute the backpacks of food every Friday so the kids can take them home and share them with their families during the weekend.
Hillary was dubbed the “Ambassador for the Youth” by Bogota during her stay. Other supporters of Blessings in a Backpack include rocker Sammy Hagar and football star Will Wolford.
Blessings in a Backpack has helped 26,000 K-5 kids in 106 schools in the U.S. and Canada. A donation of $80 can feed a single child for an entire year. Supplementing the Federal Free and Reduced Meal Program, it often provides weekend meals for children in Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Florida, Michigan, New York, Texas, California and Illinois.
To get involved, you can visit the website and adopt a school, volunteer, or donate backpacks, money or other needs. You can also send checks to:
Blessings in a Backpack
P.O. BOX 1628, LOUISVILLE, KY 40201-1628
Grammy-award winning Colombian singer Juanes is planning on holding his next “Peace Without Borders” concert in Havana, Cuba this fall. While the activist is trying to promote peace, Cuban exiles say that the concert will only serve to support Cuba’s communism.
The singer’s promotion team argues that the concert, scheduled for September 20, will not be condemning nor supporting any political dogma; that said, it is supposed to be held at the very same place where Che Guevara is honored, Revolution Plaza. (more…)
Following weeks of negotiations to orchestrate the release of two American journalists between Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, the United Nations and North Korea, former President Bill Clinton held a rare and “exhaustive” meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to finally bring the reporters home today.
The women, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, had entered the country illegally and were sentenced to hard labor as a result. After talks with Clinton, Kim issued the journalists a pardon–less than 24 hours after Clinton’s visit. (more…)
For the fourth year in a row, Waxploitation is holding an auction to benefit Darfur–as well as other human rights efforts–through the work of Doctors without Borders, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam America. 100% of sales will go to these nonprofit organizations.
Jeff Antebi, founder of Waxploitation, says, “With everything else in the news, it’s important to not forget Darfur. When we did our first benefit auction, 70,000 people had already died. Today, the number is estimated to be 300,000. Almost five million innocent civilians are caught in the middle of this, with nowhere to go.”
This year’s auction features signed gear and music from artists such as Norah Jones, Diplo, Counting Crows, Kid Rock, The Shins, Kylie Minogue, Patti Smith, Madonna, Gnarls Barkley, Wilco, Elvis Costello and many others.
In addition to this year’s celebrity swag, Waxploitation will continue to sell its Causes albums to benefit Darfur as well. The new Causes 2 CD features exlusive tracks from artists such as LCD Soundsystem, The Decemberists, My Morning Jacket, Diplo, Devendra Banhart, and Sharaon Jones & the Dap Kings.
More than 2 million people have fled their homes because of the civil war in Darfur, and at least 4 million are currently in need of humanitarian aid. Though the United States has recognized the conflict in the Sudanese country as genocide–along with many other countries and leaders–the United Nations still maintains that, though mass murder and rape are rampant in the country, the violence does not meet the terms of genocide.
Though the number of casualties in the area vary, as many as 200,000 to 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
To learn more or to get involved with the auction, visit Waxploitation’s eBay auction page.
In what was perhaps the most wonderful news story of the week, the BBC reported that thousands of child soldiers are being freed from former Maoist training camps in Nepal and sent to rehabilitation centers. These programs are to offer vocational training as well as psychological support for the children. They will also be offered a stay for up to 45 days in transit camps before going back home.
An estimated 3,000 child soldeirs will be released. (more…)
While the global community of journalists could only helplessly stand by, shrugging in bafflement as they were kept at bay deliberately by the Iranian government, it seemed that we would never truly know what was happening inside the tumultuous country following its hotly contested election last month. The world simply waited, wondering what we would hear once the chaos reached its peak, and when we would hear it.
And then along came Twitter. (more…)
Using technological advances and popular Internet tools, the United Nations Refugee Agency is bringing a live video stream of real refugee camps from all over the world to participants of this year’s World Refugee Day.
In hopes of spreading awareness and education, the site hosting the live footage also has a live chat available, as well as social networking tools to share the event and its message. Other pre-recorded videos, some featuring U.N. Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie, are also available. (more…)