On Friday night, a 24-hour global event will begin live-streaming all over the internet with 200 cultural, spiritual, and community leaders hoping to unite people across the world and celebrate our common humanity.
Sharing inspirational messages or music from their homes will be Oprah Winfrey, Jimmy Carter, Yo-Yo Ma, Julia Roberts, Deepak Chopra, Common, Jennifer Garner, Maria Shriver, Rick Warren, Martin Luther King III, Alanis Morissette, David Brooks, Eckhart Tolle, Josh Grobin, Martin Sheen & so many more.
Tim Shriver, the Chairman and CEO of Special Olympics, organized the event and spoke with GNN on the Good News Gurus podcast.
“We did polling and the data said that division and hostility is the number one problem in the county today—and people are starving for a change,” he said. “This event, the reason it is so crazy-audacious, is that people are starving for an opportunity to side WITH something.”
The Call to Unite will be live-streamed on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, LinkedIn, SiriusXM channel 109—and on their website www.Unite.Us, beginning at 8:00PM EDT on Friday May 1, running through Saturday evening.
Through lessons, performances, conversations, and more – they hope to support all of us in coping with the challenges of this moment in order to emerge from this crisis better than when it began. Participants—as well as viewers—will be invited to #AnswerTheCall by giving, serving, and sharing their stories.
RELATED: Readers Report So Many Good Deeds, We Can Barely Keep Up; Here’s 10 to Get You Through the Day
“We’ve got over 24 hours and 200 teachers. Some are homeless women; some are ex-presidents and some are ex-cons; some are 12-years-old and some are in their 80s.”
Even though billions of people around the world are isolated and anxious because of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions are rising to the occasion by showing each other love and support in countless ways. The Call to Unite, which is partnering with Points of Light, is a celebration of those acts of humanity, and an invitation to the world to join in lifting one another in this moment of need.
Each participant taking part in the global livestream event will answer the call in their own way – teaching a practice, performing a song, sharing a memory, offering a prayer, or otherwise presenting a gift to the world. (Check out the growing list of musicians, entertainers, artists, and civic leaders.)
“Some of them you may think, ‘That’s not for me,’ but others might change your life,” Shriver told GNN. “And, most important might be the one that you bring…making you realize your talent or gift.”
The event is presented by UNITE, a new collaborative led by Shriver to support projects that address universal challenges we can only solve together.
Shriver’s goal is to show, “At this moment in time, when we faced the worst, we marshaled the best.”
WATCH their trailer, and join the movement on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Twitch @TheCalltoUnite— and on YouTube, here.
INVITE Your Friends and Family to Be Inspired on Social Media…