The Amnesty meeting

I met with two of the leads from Amnesty International yesterday. It was a purposeful, productive and positive meeting -- two things you can't always say about meetings.

First, I should explain how AI is set up here in NS/NB.

There is one regional coordinator who is paid for two days a week. She, as you may have guessed, logs many more hours as a volunteer. As a matter of fact, she volunteered full-time for some years before AI was able to fund her position part-time. This is the only paid position to take care of two provinces. The coordinator's right-hand is a volunteer who has been working many long hours for AI for six years (and counting.)

The organisation relies very heavily on volunteers. As many of these are university and college students, you can get a sense of what membership turnover is like.

From a communication perspective, we have decided to focus on three areas over the next year.

1. Image building: AI gets little media coverage and is known as the organization with the people who stand on street corners asking people to sign things. Not a great position. We need to change that.
2. Creating stellar media and public awareness campaigns for 3 to 4 key events during the year to generate an image of professionalism of AI among the media and to highlight key dates. (The Nov. 25 to Dec. 10 corridor is important. Beginning with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and ending with International Human Rights Day, there are key opportunities to generate media and public interest.)
3. Creating templates or samples of various media and promotional items to help local groups do a better job of promoting their events.

In addition, I have emphasized my desire to be involved in Native issues. AI has taken on land claims as one of their key areas of concern, so there may be opportunities there for me to do something.

Before I sign off, here's a stat for you. Did you know that anyone can be part of an urgent action network that saves men and women unfairly imprisoned? The way it works is that AI sends emails to folks on the network telling them when, how and where to send letters requesting the release of a person who is being tortured, etc. The success rate is about 52 percent. That means that 52 out of every 100 people are released -- just from letter writing!

That amazes me. That 100s or 1000s of letters or postcards landing on a desk can actually have the power to release someone from prison.

Picture some guy sitting there ordering someone to be tortured, letters arrive and he says, what? "Holy shit. The world is watching. We better stop this."

Amazing.

If you're interested in reading some of these good news stories, you can click here.

Today, AI is concerned about the safety of the members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in Columbia, whose leader was murdered 11 days ago. If you'd like to help by sending a letter today, go here.

Who was it who said the pen is mightier than the sword?

All the best,
Colleen