24 Hours For Darfur

24 Hours for Darfur is a grassroots video advocacy campaign dedicated to ending the conflict in Darfur and promoting peace and security for the people living there. I received the following via email and thought it worth sharing. The Darfur genocide is far from over, and people living in the region continue to be hounded by the Janjaweed and Sudanese government forces. The African Union has been stretched to the limit and the UN has been ineffectual at stopping the violence.

Our primary initiative is to collect thousands of personal video appeals from people all over the world. All appeals will be displayed on our website and sent directly to participant's political representatives. On September 16, 2007 we will screen 24 hours of rolling footage at a rally in front of the UN headquarters and at smaller events at halls of power throughout the world - all connected through a real-time online broadcast.

US Presidential candidate John Edwards, Author Samantha Power, Actress Mia Farrow, two former United Nations Deputy Secretaries-General, two former United States Deputy Secretaries of State, and hundreds of private citizens from around the world have already submitted videos. Please join us in speaking out against genocide by submitting a video appeal of your own. Use a webcam to record a video right in your web browser, or upload a video you've recorded offline.

We have also been working with scholars, practitioners, journalists and Darfuris to compile an online video library of educational material related to the conflict. Nicholas Kristof, John Prendergast, several Human Rights Watch researchers, and many others have already contributed educational videos. You can check it out by visiting our website's education section: http://www.24hoursfordarfur.org/education.php.

For this campaign to make a significant contribution to Darfur advocacy, it needs to be truly global in scope. We hope you'll lend your voice to the effort.