Thursday, May 17, 2012

Press Release: UNAOC calls citizens worldwide to Do ONE thing for Diversity and Inclusion through 2nd global campaign

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

UN Alliance of Civilizations calls citizens worldwide to Do ONE thing for Diversity and Inclusion through 2nd global campaign

New York May 16, 2012- In 2002 The UN General Assembly declared May 21 as the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development following the adoption in 2001 of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity by UNESCO.

To celebrate this Day, the United Nations Alliance of Civilization (UNAOC) will be launching the second edition of the Do ONE Thing for Diversity and Inclusion campaign in partnership with UNESCO.  Based on the successful model of the Earth Day that encourages people to take concrete action to preserve the planet, the Do One Thing campaign invites people from around the world to do one thing to support cultural diversity through cultural exchanges, music, food, cinema, languages or art.

A dedicated Facebook page has been created as the main vehicle of the campaign over the past year, visited and liked by millions of people around the world.

Diversity, dialogue and development: these are three magic Ds. Add a fourth D from Do one thing campaign and join us in creating a positive narrative for our age of diversity. Living together in diversity within tolerant and inclusive societies is indeed a dream. But action is what dreams are made out of. Now is a time that we need action to produce results, for with dreams become true  just join us in the Do One Thing Campaign! said President Jorge Sampaio, High Representative for the UNAOC.

UNESCO is proud to be a partner in this campaign, stated its Director-General, Irina Bokova.  Cultural diversity is something to be celebrated and enjoyed by people everywhere.  Not only does it provide insight into the richness of the human experience, it is a hallmark of tolerant, inclusive societies.

The second edition will add new features:

A world movement for Diversity: This year, the initiative is supported by  major corporate partners including Intuit, Sodexo, Deloitte, Genentech, Dell, McAfee, American Airlines,  Vivendi, Major League of Baseball  and a wide coalition of NGOs and civil society organizations from all over the world including Red Cross, Civicus, SAGE Foundation (India), Global Dialogue Foundation (Australia), Akili Dada (Africa), ALECSO (Middle East and Arab countries), Council of Europe, Secretara General Iberoamericana, Vivario (Brazil) and Nishan Forum on World Civilization(China),  among others[i].

The activities: A video contest and a photo contest are also organized at this occasion in partnership with the UNESCO Centre of Florence with monetary and gifts provided by the partners of the campaign. Videos from personalities all around the world are being posted on the Facebook page each week and many events related to the campaign are being organized to Do One Thing for Diversity and Inclusion.


Contact:
Jean-Christophe Bas, Senior Advisor, UNAOC, Jeancb@unops.org, Marta Lopez, Campaign Coordinator, UNAOC, martal@unops.org Mauro Rosi, Communication, Knowledge Management and Partnerships, UNESCO, m.rosi@unesco.org

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