UNITED Tour 2005: A Successful Encore for Human Rights - Award-winning Music Video Reaches Millions of Children Worldwide
The UNITED Tour 2005, reached out to millions of children during an international 21-day tour in July/August. Young Los Angeles filmmaker, Taron Lexton, and his mother, Mary Shuttleworth, founder of Youth for Human Rights International, circumnavigated the globe to share Lexton’s award-winning music video UNITED with each country that had played a role in its creation and eventual acclaim.
(PRWEB) August 18, 2005 -- The UNITED Tour 2005, reached out to millions of
children during an international 21-day tour in July/August. Young Los Angeles
filmmaker, Taron Lexton, and his mother, Mary Shuttleworth, founder of Youth for
Human Rights International (YHRI), www.youthforhumanrights.org circumnavigated the globe to share
Lexton’s award-winning music video UNITED with each country that had played a
role in its creation and eventual acclaim. Their trip included Mexico,
Venezuela, England, Ghana (Africa), India, and Thailand.
In 2004, the
duo traveled to 14 different countries to gather footage for UNITED, the human
rights music video, which has since taken top awards at some of the most
prestigious film festivals in the world, including the New York Film Festival.
This year they returned to these same countries with a full human rights
curriculum created for YHRI by co-sponsoring organizations, the Human Rights
Department of the Church of Scientology International and the Church of
Scientology, Los Angeles.
The UNITED music video was put in the hands of
dignitaries, officials, community leaders, media, youth groups and students to
promote the importance of human rights education focusing on youth leadership
and responsibilities.
The UNITED rap music video features original
lyrics by rapper Charles Gee and music by Geoff Levin, as well as brief cameos
by celebrities - Isaac Hayes, Catherine Bell, Jenna Elfman and Erika Christensen
among them. It tells the story of a young boy bullied off a playground who
rallies the children of the world with a simple message “if U-N-I-T-E-D a better
place this world would be.” He captures the support of the children of the world
by sending out a fleet of paper airplanes to bring friendship to his embattled
playground, and turns a tense confrontation into a new bond for peace. Lexton at
age 19 wrote, directed and filmed the entire piece.
Lexton and his
mother participated in numerous meetings and conferences in the countries they
visited. Press, radio and TV picked up the message and brought UNITED, as well
as PSAs based on the video, to millions. As the result of one visit made by the
pair to the national TV station of Venezuela, a regular TV program on human
rights is now reaching not only the whole of Venezuela, but far across South
America.
In Mexico they met with the President of the Commission on
Human Rights of the Legislative Assembly. In India the former President of India
inaugurated a YHRI Youth Summit. The highlight occurred when “What are Human
Rights?” an accompanying education booklet, was released in Hindi (language of
India) and Urdu (language of Pakistan). Students from 22 different schools sent
paper airplanes to greet a delegation of 15 youth delegates from countries,
including Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan - all united for human
rights.
The National Human Rights Commission of Thailand hosted the YHRI
UNITED Tour 2005 conference in their country, where the YHRI human rights
education action plan was proposed and discussed. Following this, the Human
Rights Education Package was presented to the Department of Education for
implementation in Thailand’s schools.
In Ghana, the pair were invited to
participate in Panafest, an annual gathering of all African nations to advance
African culture. The Honorable King of Cape Coast, King Osabarimba, hosted a
YHRI Pan-African Youth Summit which was held in the Cape Coast Castle. The 16th
century stronghold served as a holding place for men and women to be shipped to
foreign countries into slavery. It was a fitting site for the summit which dealt
with human rights atrocities of sex trafficking of women and children, one of
the world’s most lucrative illicit enterprises today.
The tour added a
stop in London, England, for an Interreligious Conference held in the wake of
terrorist bombings, to draw attention to the devastation for children by this
near ultimate affront to human dignity. “With inhuman trafficking across
international borders for sex, sweatshops crammed with children under the age of
15 working all day long without any education and 600 million children living in
poverty around the world, we need to pay attention to human rights. That’s why I
am so very proud that UNITED is playing a significant role to bring people up to
realizing how important the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
is,” says Lexton.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/8/prweb273796.htm