Every year for the past 10 years now, Cossette and Amnesty International have promoted the Write for Rights letter-writing campaign. This global initiative to defend human rights … read morearound the world continues to bear fruit, having helped free dozens of people who were unjustly imprisoned. This year, the campaign is directed at youth - society’s true drivers of change - with the aim of raising their awareness about the reality of people living in countries where simply expressing their opinion or taking part in a protest can land them in jail. To be sure the message resonated with students, Cossette developed and recorded dictations of true present-day stories from the Writing for Rights write-a-thon, with a hand from Ludivine Reding, Mathieu Dufour, Alice Morel-Michaud, and Anas Hassouna. The objective was to shine a light on the fragility of freedom of expression in other parts of the world and, at the same time, show the real impact that simple gestures like letter-writing can have. Students were then given the opportunity to join the initiative by writing letters of support to the person whose story they had just learned about, with the help of their teachers.
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