Yesterday, on 3 December 2019, the members of the Committee Against Torture took part in two activities dedicated to the International Giving Day – #GivingTuesday.
Member of the Committee Against Torture Yuliya Frolova shares her impressions of #GivingTuesday, which took place in Blagosfera: “In the framework of the festival we were telling about human rights defenders’ work in general and about the Committee Against Torture in particular, demonstrated our “Russian Yoga School” video clips, a cartoon on human rights and even made an origami-dove out of color paper as a symbol of peace and freedom.
The participants were offered to participate in a flash-mob. They had to write letters or draw pictures for three characters of their choice: the torture victim, the person guilty of tortures or the investigator who intentionally did not investigate those tortures. It turned out to be even more interesting than we thought it would. Soon we will process all these letters and will distribute them to recipients!
There have been a lot of questions about our work, since the majority of the young men did not know about the existence of such organization as The Committee Against Torture. The most common theory was that we were protecting from home violence. Probably, the home tasks which are forced on the children by their parents, are closely associated with tortures among the school children.
We would like to thank all the participants for their kinds words about us. Great many thanks to Blagosfera for inviting us! Volunteers from the Sakharov Center were helping us heroically, we were very glad about that and we thank the girls for their generosity. For us it was an unusual and very useful experience!”
For the photos see the link.
The second activity took place in the Nizhny Novgorod “Herring and Coffee”. For the whole evening, Chairman of the Committee Against Torture Igor Kalyapin and head of the Investigations Section of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the organization Albert Kuznetsov were working at the bar counter. In the framework of the event everyone could not only order their favorite drink or snack, but also pose questions to human rights defenders.
As we previously reported, all the profit, earned by the café on 3 December, will be transferred to the people who suffered from illegal violence of the law-enforcement officers.
Igor Kalyapin shared his emotions of the event, jokingly: “Now I’m earning some extra money as a barman in Herring and Coffee cafe in my off-hours. That’s the place where I answer all questions, give interviews and pour beer. By the way, the profit from the beverages sold during my shift at the bar counter will be transferred for helping the torture victims, to this address”.
For the photos see the link.
The idea of the International charity day #Giving Tuesday appeared in 2012 and spread in over 100 countries of the world. On this day, millions of people unite for the good cause and tell about it. This movement is supported by well-known actors, musicians, politicians, as well as by over 300 thousand commercial and non-commercial organizations. This is an open platform for cooperation of NGOs, business, mass media, local communities and a new global impulse for development of charity in the world. The first #Giving Tuesday in Russia took place on 29 November 2016. In 2018, over 2685 partners from 275 cities, who organized over 2000 charitable events, joined the movement.