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UK Charity 'stops human traffic' on London's Oxford Street

Mabrur Ahmed | 19.11.2008 12:24 | Culture | Globalisation | Social Struggles | Birmingham | World

A UK Charity, Restless Beings, this weekend (15th November) confused, amused and enlightened Christmas shoppers in London’s Oxford Street. Modelling agency Model Advice, contacted upcoming models to take part in an initiative to raise awareness of issues such as displacement, child prostitution and substance misuse for children in street situations in Dhaka. A procession of models, walked hand in hand along Tottenham Court Road all the way to Marble Arch and back stopping along the way to freeze in positions to capture the imagination and curiosity of the Christmas shoppers.

Stop Child Prostitution
Stop Child Prostitution


Restless Beings brings a new way of charity, bringing together creativity and the act of giving with the ambition of working with and for the most marginalized communities across the world. This is achieved via collaborations with both established and unsigned artists across all forms who enhance the organization’s bold take on these issues by bringing them on to the stage. Restless Beings is an open-minded organization, consisting of volunteers who are concerned with the marginalized: regardless of age, background, creed. Its first project is working with children in street situations in Bangladesh. Many of the children we work with are abused and sold into prostitution by their captors. For more info visit www.restlessbeings.org

Since there inception last year they have created a huge following through social networks facebook and myspace. They have also held a series of high impact events working with unsigned talent from across the arts.


The purpose of the event was to bring the act of charity into direct contact with members of the public and raise the awareness to the masses about issues such as child prostitution, human rights violations and biased social welfare. Also, the event was filmed to later be edited and used as an advert for the charity to appeal to youth generation. The models walked from Tottenham Court Road to Bond Street and back taking a diversion through Carnaby Street and ending at the Dominion Theatre on the corner of Tottenham Court Road. Along the way, large crowds gathered to watch on in amusement, curiosity and support. The procession started at 1.30 pm and continued until 4.30 pm with a bevy of models walking hand in hand in a long human chain. Every five minutes or so, an anonymous whistle was blown to signal the beginning of a freeze, where the models posed in frozen position much to the curiosity of the Christmas shoppers until the whistle was blown again.

In total more than 20 ‘freezes’ took place and support grew gradually along the way. More than 1,000 leaflets were distributed informing the general public of the causes and effects of the growing population of street children in Bangladesh. The video will soon be ready to be viewed. For more information please contact  info@restlessbeings.org

Mabrur Ahmed
- e-mail: mabrur@restlessbeings.org
- Homepage: http://www.restlessbeings.org


Comments

Display the following 2 comments

  1. Easy to do n 50.000 a year — mary
  2. re: easy to do... — Mabrur

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