NEWS: CCUNESCO – Be an Ally to Eliminate Racism and Discrimination

Dear Partners,

First, let me take this opportunity to wish all of you and your families well. While we experience what is an unprecedented event in our time, our thoughts go out to all of you who are working from home, on modified hours, and perhaps also on the front lines of fighting this pandemic and supporting our communities.

That being said, it is with great pleasure that we share with you all this year’s campaign for March 21st- the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. This year’s concept is surely to strike you as different and unexpected- as we have chosen to go with puppets as the feature of this campaign. While incorporating puppets into a campaign on eliminating racial discrimination is a new take on this campaign, we believe that it is nonetheless captivating and conveys the messages of allyship and awareness around racial discrimination that continues to exist in all of our communities. The campaign was developed by our secretariat at the Canadian Commission for UNESCO along with several experts in anti-racism, human rights and communication.

This campaign will also be circulating at a critical time, one in which we see the increased and unjust stigmatization of Asian, and more specifically, Chinese communities due to the outbreak of COVID-19 worldwide. Now more than ever, it is imperative upon us to remind those in our social circles, workplaces, and communities that racial discrimination, in all its forms, must never be tolerated.

We are planning on launching the campaign on Thursday morning with a first video, along with a blog post, which is attached for your information only. We will be posting more videos the following days until Monday, March 24. We invite you to share our Facebook publications and tweets!

Finally, we are asking you to please share and circulate this campaign and its message within your networks- both personal and professional. Take this opportunity to talk to your colleagues, your clients and the people you represent about the need to confront racial discrimination. We are all better for it.

Link – Be an Ally to Eliminate Racism and Discrimination