The multiple Oscar winning actress Angelina Jolie has been using her star power in a powerful light in the last few years. Jolie was named a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Goodwill Ambassador in August of 2001. (UNHCR is a UN agency which currently helps 20 million refugees in approx. 120 countries.) Since then, Jolie has focused a large amount of energy in reducing the world's hurting population.In fact, just a year after her appointment as Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie won the world's first "Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program Humanitarian Award." She received the award for "her work and dedication as Goodwill Ambassador for the UNHCR... she has mounted an impressive record of personal commitment, travel, financial contributions, and resources on behalf of millions of persons..."
Jolie is a powerhouse, having the resources and commitment to personally make dozens of trips to underdeveloped countries so that she can see for herself how people live and what kind of help each specific situation needs. In just the first year of being a Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie visited Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Namibia, Cambodia, Pakistan, and Thailand.
Jolie's latest and greatest commitment seems to be to the Darfur region of Sudan. There are presently over 180,000 Sudanese refugees living in refugee shelters in neighboring Chad, because they are escaping militia attacks in their native Sudan.
Jolie started to push in 2004 for UN support and help in the Darfur region. In June of 2004, Jolie toured the refugee camps and make-shift shelters of thousands of people, and immediately called for funds to bring some relief for the refugees.
Soon after Jolie's efforts, the UN decided that the Darfur region needed at least $236 million to help the displaced persons of Sudan.
It is estimated that over a million people have been displaced because of the conflict in Sudan.
Recently Jolie has begun to release her own personal journals of her travels to countries in need. Her first journal entry, called Justice for Darfur, was published in The Washington Post, and has a cutline that reads "The writer is a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees."
Celebrities aren’t the only ones concerned about Darfur.
In March, a small group of Bellarmine students decided that they were going to make a difference after watching two documentaries on the Darfur at the Muhammed Ali Center.
Sophomore Erin Ott immediately got started on organizing a group on campus willing to help spread the word on the genocide occurring in Darfur.
“I’ve individually been researching and acting for towards an end to the genocide in Darfur and I found that the entire Bellarmine community should be aware of it. There are so many people unaware of the atrocities going on abroad,” Ott stated.
The Darfur region is located in the African country of Sudan. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website on Darfur explains how deeply the carnage runs.
The group seems to be making some headway already.
“So far a group of 10 to 15 students have offered to be part of a planning committee to help bring events to campus that would educate the Bellarmine community on the crisis,” Ott stated.
"We hope that the events inspire others to get involved and to act to end genocide in Darfur.”
The group has definitive plans to have a showing of “Escape from Darfur,” one of the two documentaries shown at the Ali center, at BU.
“We’re planning to get news coverage, both TV and newspaper, for the showing on BU’s campus of local filmmaker Andrew Thuita’s documentary ‘Escape from Darfur.’ It was one of the two documentaries shown at the Ali center,” Ott stated.
Ott continued, “We hope that in gaining a wider perspective of issues abroad, we can relate them to our situation at home and work together on something that can make a difference.”
For more on Angelina Jolie and her humanitarian works, check out these links:
Jolie calls for Urgent Aid to Sudanese
UN Works: Angelina Jolie's Story
Jolie: 'I cried constantly' over refugee work
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