October 19, 2022 – Today, students and young leaders across Canada gathered to celebrate Global Dignity Day alongside more than 1 million of their peers in 80 countries.
This year’s global event, hosted by Global Dignity Canada, TakingITGlobal and the Center for Global Education, connected participants from 18 sites in 11 countries through a video-conference, while thousands of others participate in the celebration via live-stream.
The theme for this year’s Global Dignity Day celebration, Unique & Connected in Kindness, will focus on building inclusive global communities rooted in kindness. Students heard from Global Dignity Role Models, Amy Mapara, Senior Manager for Youth Engagement Strategy at the Canadian Red Cross, and Jon Collins, Chief Development Officer of HopeAir, who will share stories of dignity and kindness in action.
Students enjoyed a musical performance from Tara Baswani, internationally acclaimed creator, UN SDG’s accelerator, environmentalist, Co-Founder of LembasWorks and member of Global Dignity’s International Council of Advisors, who will share her song HUM. HUM, which means “Us” in Hindi, was specially created to align to the Global Dignity mission to #UniteKindness and inclusively connect our unique actions to create planetary care and wellbeing for all life.
“Kindness is the cultural fabric that enables greater dignity,” said Global Dignity Board Chair and Canadian Country Chair, Giovanna Mingarelli. “It is our hope that by acknowledging existing inequalities, students will see that they have the ability to impact and enrich the lives of others through their own actions and choices.”
This year’s theme built on Global Dignity’s ongoing #UniteKindness campaign, which aggregates and showcases kindness campaigns around the world. Since the launch of the #UniteKindness campaign in 2020, over 3.5 million acts of kindness have been aggregated across 40 kindness campaigns.
In order to scale the #UniteKindness movement even further, UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Education and Peace (MGIEP) is collaborating with Global Dignity to spread kindness through their #KindnessMatters initiative, which was formally announced during the video conference event.
“It’s important to put love and kindness into action: that’s what building inclusive communities is all about!” said Olivia Bechthold, the Executive Director of Global Dignity in Canada. “This campaign shows us how easy it is to love oneself, others and the world in really simple ways, from helping a stranger to donating food”.
Generous sponsors of this year’s Global Dignity Day event include: TakingItGlobal, the Centre for Global Education, Global Groove for Peace, LembasWorks, Pondstone Digital Marketing, M&C Consulting, Hello Friday Marketing and Communications, and MC2, Inc.
Co-founded at the World Economic Forum by HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, Operation HOPE Founder, Chairman and CEO John Hope Bryant and author and philosopher Pekka Himanen, Global Dignity teaches the concept of dignity—every person’s equal and inherent value—to promote inclusion, equality and a greater sense of our shared humanity. In 2021, the organization reached over 8 million people directly and 50 people indirectly around the world.
More information and details of the international celebration live stream can be found at: www.globaldignity.ca.