Tuesday, October 13

beautiful things of a different kind 1.

So I finished reading "I was told there would be cake" by Sloane Crosley a few weeks ago and I really liked it. However, there was just this one thing that bugged me about Sloane. She was so dismissive of charity and volunteering. And it's this attitude in soo many people that I think sucks. May be it is because giving has become a bit trendy, it has some how also become a bit passe.. or something. I dont know really, but from the words of someone much smarter than me:

"If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it; absolute poverty is bad; there is some poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance; therefore we ought to prevent some absolute poverty." -Peter Singer

So for this weeks beautiful things of a different kind 1:
This is such an incredible organisation, husband and I give to them every month. In my googling I found out the history of Amnesty, how cool? Check them out.



Amnesty International was founded in 1961 by London barrister Peter Benenson. He was outraged at reports that a group of students in Portugal had been jailed for raising a toast to freedom in a cafe. So he issued an appeal for the ‘prisoners of conscience’, as they later became known, who were languishing in jails around the world. He called on people everywhere to join a mass letter-writing campaign to pressure governments to set such prisoners free.

Within months, people in Australia and other countries had formed groups and began a worldwide movement, helping to create Amnesty International.

Today, Amnesty International is the world’s largest human rights organisation - a global movement of 2.7 million supporters across 150 countries. There are approximately 82,000 supporters in Australia working to defend human rights and dignity.

Traditionally, Amnesty International worked to defend civil and political rights, focused on prisoners of conscience, torture and the death penalty. We have responded to changes in the human rights environment around the world, and expanded our areas of work to also encompass economic, social and cultural rights.

In 1977 Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work.

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