23 Aug, 2012
Oct 7 Sewa Day Volunteers Stand up for Human Rights with Amnesty
LONDON- August 21, 2012 -(BUSINESS WIRE)–A partnership between Sewa Day 2012, which encourages social action, good deeds and public service and Amnesty International, the campaigning human rights organisation has been announced.
“We are very pleased that we are joining forces with Amnesty International. Through co-operating all our volunteers will receive support and materials, ensuring that everyone who takes time out of their day, creates a powerful and effective letter that can help protect people at risk from serious human rights violations.”
Amnesty International is collaborating with organisers to encourage volunteers to carry out ‘Sewa’ – which means ‘be of service’- by appealing for the freedom of individuals at risk, as part of the organisation’s Urgent Actions programme.
In local communities including schools, temples, mosques and community centres, volunteers will hold letter writing events to build pressure and appeal to the government authorities who have influence and the ability to act over the individual at risk.
The Urgent Action Network has over 150,000 members and tackles around 400 cases a year, addressing not only the torture but also death threats, the death penalty, ‘enforced disappearance’, forced repatriation, extrajudicial execution, secret detention, forced evictions and a range of other human rights violations.
Sewa Day aims to promote public service and selflessness across the voluntary, private, and education sectors and this year takes place on 7th October.
Arup Ganguly, chairman of Sewa Day said: “We are very pleased that we are joining forces with Amnesty International. Through co-operating all our volunteers will receive support and materials, ensuring that everyone who takes time out of their day, creates a powerful and effective letter that can help protect people at risk from serious human rights violations.”
“Each year, Sewa Day provides the opportunity for thousands of volunteers to donate their time to various projects in their community. By writing a letter as part of Amnesty International’s Urgent Action programme, the volunteers will be making a difference, by campaigning to restore the freedom of the many individuals who are at risk all around the world.
Champa Patel, Head of Casework and Activism, Amnesty International adds: “Sewa Day is about individual acts of kindness, and about collective endeavour. These are the same principles that make the act of writing a letter – along with thousands of others – such a powerful campaigning tool for Amnesty International. On Sewa Day, through writing a letter, any volunteer will have the opportunity to take direct action on behalf of someone they will never meet but whose life they have the potential to transform.”
Visit www.amnesty.org.uk or www.sewaday.org for more information.
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