2. Jenni have been involved in human rights work for as long as she can remember. As a teenager, she was an active member of Amnesty International and other NGOs. As a member of a prison reform NGO, she wrote letters for years to an 18 year-old man in prison. After high school, she volunteered to work in Israel with Ethiopian immigrants. She went undercover as a university student to Russia to help Soviet Jews get out. When I discovered a masters program in human rights, it was an obvious next step for her. Shortly after that she wound up with the UN in Rwanda just after the genocide investigating human rights abuses and there was no looking back.
3. It is hard to imagine doing anything else. Jenni have always had a strong sense of justice. It always struck her as so random where we might be born and how our religion, race, colour, sex etc might adversely impact our lives. She was aware of how fortunate she was to be born into a privileged family, community and country. And wanted to fight with people who were denied their basic human rights.
4. The story of WITNESS is one of both vision and evolution. It began in 1988, the year musician and activist Peter Gabriel traveled with Amnesty International’s Human Rights Now! Tour. Peter brought along a Sony Handycam, one of the first small camcorders marketed to consumers, to record the stories he heard. In 1991, a bystander captured on videotape the brutal beating of Rodney King, Jr. by Los Angeles police. The footage, flashed on TV screens around the globe, initiated an international conversation about police brutality and racial discrimination. Those images demonstrated the immense power of video to capture the world’s attention and viscerally communicate human rights abuses. How it started
5. With the momentum generated by reactions to the King video, Peter was able to realize his visionary idea of putting film at the forefront of human rights campaigns. With a one million dollar seed grant from the Reebok Human Rights Foundation and a partnership with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First), WITNESS was born in 1992, becoming an independent nonprofit organization in 2001. WITNESS has worked in over 80 countries and partnered with hundres of organizations to advance human rights through the use of video for change. Today, WITNESS has a staff of 30 and a $5 million budget.
6. Theophilus Anthony Duncan Fok Yap Rong En Low Fu Yi Thaddeus Source: http://www.witness.org/ http://www.pursueaction.org/ichange-a-chat-with-jenni-wolfson/ http://www.fastcompany.com/social/2008/profiles/witness.html
