UNA-Canada Toronto Branch

The Nomination Committee convened on May 7, 2013 and processed all nomination forms received through email and regular mail by the pre-announced deadline of May 6. The committee approved the following list of candidates to be presented at the AGM for elections of the UNACTO Board of Directors 2013/2014:

Current Directors
1. Georgina Bencsik
2. Raheena Dahya
3. Larry Hebb
4. Jasmine Jackman
5. Youel Serkis
6. Melinda Rooke
7. Syed Khusro
8. Firoz Shroff
9. Larysa Kazyeva
10. Helen Kavouras Lopes
New Applicants
11. Justin Tung
12. Asma BaJunaid
13. Arun Dhanota
14. Catherine Jutsun

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April 26th, 2013

For Immediate Release

Celebrity of Emmy, Hot Docs and Bill Gates/George Soros’ Fame to be at Hot Docs 2013’s “Tough Bond”, Saturday

Toronto – In partnership with the United Nations In Canada-Toronto (UNACTO), United Nations-Geneva‘s Chris Mburu of Hilde Back Education Fund‘s Bill-Gates-George-Soros-funded, Emmy-nominated, Hot Docs-featured documentary “A Small Act“, will be in Toronto for a discussion and screenings with the filmmakers of official Hot Docs 2013 selection “Tough Bond“: “For three years, filmmakers Austin Peck and Anneliese Vandenberg follow four lost youngsters. Driven from their villages by poverty to nearby towns and exploding city slums, and responsible to no one but each other, together they brave a world without a government or community to protect them. Respectful in its unflinching approach, Tough Bond is a [riveting] image of modern Kenya.“

In direct relation to “Tough Bond”, as mentioned above, the UN’s Chris Mburu of HBEF’s Bill-Gates-George-Soros-funded, Emmy-nominated, Hot Docs-featured documentary “A Small Act“, will speak about how holocaust survivor, Hilde Back of Sweden, played a small-but-enormous role in the education of formerly poor child in Kenya. The inspiring documentary is about how a small act of kindness can have far reaching positive effects in the lives of others and will be screened at our September 25th UNACTO reception in order to build awareness and funds for accepted GTA applicants to the United Nations Professional Placement program.

Join us at

Manifesto Festival Headquarters

Saturday, April 27th @ 6:30pm

37 Bulwer Street

(east of Spadina, north of Queen)

For more information, please contact me: Gillian Moody, UNACTO Co-Chair of Communications and Development.

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BACKGROUNDER

UNACTO

The United Nations Association in Canada’s twenty branches across the country represent its 20,000 members. The Toronto Branch of the United Nations Association in Canada (UNACTO) is an integral part of a national not-for-profit charitable organization that helps inform and educate Torontonians concerning United Nations activities and programmes.

We are also one of the founding members of the World Federation of United Nations Associations (WFUNA), established in August 1946 as the peoples’ movement for the United Nations. Now, with UNA’s in over 90 countries, WFUNA is the only international, non-governmental organization devoted entirely to the support of the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter. Each UNA educates and engages their respective national public in the work of the United Nations and the critical international issues which affect us all.

UNACTO offers a window into the work of the UN, as well as a way to become engaged in the critical international issues that affect us all—human rights, poverty, sustainable development, education, communications—and many others. Our aim is to engage our city and to encourage work towards the goals of the UN.

United Nations

The UN’s goals are: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, to achieve universal primary education, to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women, to reduce child mortality, to improve maternal health, to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, to ensure environmental sustainability, and to develop a global partnership for development.

Following the ending of World War I, the Great War, in 1918 and the signing of a formal Peace Treaty at Versailles the following year, it was decided to establish a “League of Nations” that would encourage disarmament and help prevent future outbreaks of war.

The “grand” idea was that negotiations and diplomatic measures would settle any international disputes and the quality of life around the world would be improved.

Unfortunately within 20 years another world war had broken out and ideas for a future organization began to emerge in various declarations signed at Allied wartime conferences.

U.S. President F D Roosevelt had first used the term “United Nations” shortly after US entry into World War II, when he referred to a “Declaration by the United Nations” on January 1^st, 1942.

Between August and October 1944 representatives of the United Kingdom, the United States, the USSR and the Republic of China met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC to discuss what was to replace the old League of Nations. As a result, proposals were made that outlined the purposes of a United Nations organization, its membership and the arrangements to be made to maintain international peace and security, together with international economic and social co-operation.

It was decided that the new organization would be open to any nation that had joined the Allies by 1^stMarch 1945 and on 25^th April 1945 a conference was held in San Francisco to draft a UN Charter. The governments of the 51 original members of the UN formally ratified this Charter on 24^thOctober 1945 and the United Nations formally came into being.

There are now 193 members of the UN. Its success depends entirely on the goodwill and co-operation of its membership.

Chris Mburu Bio

Chris Mburu, a graduate of the Harvard Law School’s Master’s Program, is an international human rights lawyer from Kenya, currently serving as the UN Senior Human Rights Advisor in Rwanda. He was previously serving as a Human Rights Officer with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, focusing on anti-

discrimination work. A graduate of University of Nairobi (LL.B) and Harvard Law School (LL.M), Mr Mburu has worked on human rights, governance, democracy, peace and conflict resolution issues for over 20 years and has served in many countries including USA, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Uganda, South Africa, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Prior to his transfer to Geneva, he served as Advisor on Democracy for the UN Regional

Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Yaoundé, Cameroon. He has previously worked with leading human rights organizations and policy think tanks, including Global Rights, the International Crisis Group and Amnesty International.

In 2001, while still working with the UN, Mr Mburu started the Hilde Back Education Fund, a charitable organization in Kenya whose work is to support the education of bright children from poor families. He named it after a Swedish woman, Ms Hilde Back, a holocaust survivor who supported his education when he was a poor child growing up in a village in Kenya.

The story of Chris and Hilde became the subject of an Emmy-nominated Hollywood documentary film called “A Small Act” which debuted at the Sundance Festival in 2010 and was voted among the Top-10 audience favorites at the Toronto HotDocs festival the same year. It was featured extensively in Canadian Media. More information about this film can be obtained from www.asmallact.com.

Chris Mburu is married to Ms Leslie Cummins from Toronto and they have three children.

Manifesto Festival

Founded in April 2007, Manifesto Community Projects is a non-profit grassroots organization known for our annual Festival of Community and Culture as well as year-round dynamic urban arts programming including workshops, lectures, and showcases.

Mission

Manifesto unites, inspires, and empowers diverse communities of young people through arts and culture.

Description

Manifesto works to develop unique and positive community arts programming to support the exposure and celebration of our rich and diverse cultural histories; to share experience and expertise inter-generationally; to help instill a sense of civic and national pride in urban art forms and strengthen foundations for a homegrown star structure; and to nurture the continued growth of art, music, and culture by actively engaging the public – especially youth – in authentic and interactive events.To achieve this mission, all activities are built around five over-arching yet multi-faceted objectives: Connect; Cultivate; Communicate; Create; and Showcase. These objectives are pursued in myriad ways and everything Manifesto does can be tied back to them. It is this foundation that enables the organization to turn its flexibility and versatility into a strength that provides the freedom to respond to identified needs and opportunities within the youth arts community and to continue to refine and to innovate.

As a result of Manifesto’s hip hop roots, our organization has thrived and established a distinct position within Toronto’s vibrant scene of youth-based community arts programming. Hip hop culture, increasingly the dominant global youth subculture with special relevance in Toronto, is a powerful point of departure for engaging youth that provides the tools and perspective to transform conflict into creativity; adversity into opportunity; oppression into expression, and subsequently inspire positive change. This approach is of added importance as it aims to counteract the negative messages reinforced through commercial distortions of the culture, where too often messages glorifying violence, misogyny, gun culture, drugs and rampant materialism are the status quo. Instead, Manifesto harnesses the power of hip hop youth culture to galvanize young people into personal and collective action to create positive change on a local, national, and international scale.

Snapshot of a board meeting: standing, Syed Khusro; left-right seated, Laurence Hebb in beige jacket, Asma Bajunaid on cell phone, Larysa Kazyeva, Helen Kavouras Lopes; Raheena Dahya; (Photo credit: IT Officer Justin Tung)

Introduction: 6 pm
Committee Meetings: 6:15pm – 7:15pm
Board Meeting: 7:15pm – 9:30pm

Learn about UNACTO’s committees, our future events, and how you can volunteer. Everyone is welcome to attend. (We thank our sponsor Starbucks)

See you there!

(Co-Chair Communications and Development Gillian Moody, World Renowned Environmentalist Jim Harris, Youth/Education Co-Chair Syed Khusro; Photo by IT Officer Justin Tung)

• Climate change as a priority world issue: “As climate change makes the world hotter, more evaporation will lead to more drought, thereby leading to more flooding and torrential downpours. Climate change is not only bad for the environment, but it is also bad for our economy as the oceans rise, species are lost and ecological refugees increase.”

• As per the current poor allocation of funds, the importance of adopting environmental sustainability initiatives in government and business, because environmental problems continue to kill the economy

• A call for action for environmental change, due to the ”lack of importance, not-in-my-back-yard-syndrome”: Mr. Harris related how we, especially our youth, can help to address environmental concerns at a “glocal” level. After explaining that a fundamental shift in the way we think about climate change is necessary, he referenced Mahatma Gandhi in reminding the audience, “We need to be the change we wish to see in the world”.

Not only was Jim Harris inspiring, but he was also engaging. He opened the floor to questions and encouraged participants to address their own environmental questions and concerns. Canadian concerns included fracking, tar sands development and the world-recognized Lake Winnipeg‘s near-death status.

Also, the United Nations Environment Program addresses concerns such as mercury emissions via gold mining and coal burning, protection of marine life in the Caspian Sea and reduction of emissions that contribute to climate change.

I would definitely recommend Jim Harris as a future speaker and expert in the environmental field. He showed us that responding to environmental concerns could sustain our economy and enhance international leadership, leaving attendees with hope for a more sustainable and environmentally friendly world.

(Photo below: IT Officer/Photographer Justin Tung, Banking Communications Specialist Agnès Rouhaud, Youth Organizer Diana Fernandes, Co-Chair Communications and Development Gillian Moody, Environmental Communications Specialist Debra Weinryb, Law Specialist Gayatri “Guy” N.; the whiteboard behind asks the question, “What is fracking?”)