Tag Archives: modern day slavery

What’s Your Calling? What’s Your Response?

This past Thursday, fellow bloggers Evange.List, Spare Change, Pulse and Signal and I checked out the early screening for the rockumentary: Call+Response, about international slavery and the modern abolitionist movement.

The film combined top music artists (Five for Fighting, Switchfoot, Natasha Bedingfield, ImogenHeap and more!), performing a plethora of heart-awakening music to the footage of modern day slavery images and video that evoke a response.

Collecting testimony from modern day activists ranging from Madeleine Albright to Ashley Judd and Nicholas Kristof and many more, the film calls attention to 27 million of the world’s dirtiest secrets. The film culminates and begs the question: How will YOU respond?

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The aspect of the film I find most inspiring is the person behind the film: musician Justin Dillon. According to the film’s website:

“Justin Dillon came across the issue of Human Trafficking while touring in Russia. Justin met scores of girls whose ambition to come west was being preyed upon by traffickers. The young girl assigned to interpret for him would share about the many “opportunities” that were being offered to her to come to west.

Justin looked into the phoney opportunities being offered to these girls and became incensed at how easy it was to trick them. After sharing with them the dangers of these proposals, he vowed to do something about this issue once he returned home.”

And so he did. Justin, with no connections or leverage into the entertainment industry, began on a quest to call attention to the issue. He showed how one man with a strong conviction could inspire a movement. A year and a half later, there is now the film Call+Response with thousands responding to the issue of slavery.

At the live screening, Justin spoke to the crowd and said the sole question he asked himself was: What is he good at, and how could he use that talent to solve the issue? Thus, I ask you. Like Justin, what’s your calling?

What are the talents you have, and how are you being called to respond to the modern day issues plaguing humanity?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS-0CHXfyIk&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1]

Be Moved.

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