Friends Without Borders, Global Rickshaw Style!

Click on image to view video

One of the many awesome experiences in the process of putting together the ill-fated Dil se Dil Independence Day Friendship Celebration was the chance to work with the brilliant Mumbai filmmakers Shivraj Shantakumar and Aparna Wilder, whose award winning film company Wild Kumar makes music videos and television commercials, and whose side project Global Rickshaw does shorts for the NGO community. We were looking for 90 seconds of fun to introduce Friends Without Borders to the television audience at Dil se Dil.

Click on the image above (or here) to see a low-res, high-spirit film about Friends Without Borders by Global Rickshaw, presented in three, unbelievably adorable parts.

If you missed our earlier film, created by Buddy Mukherji of Black Magic Motion Pictures, click here.

Dil se Dil Postponed. Long Live the Forces of Peace!

Upon receiving a threat of mass violence perceived by the Indian Intelligence Bureau to be specific, credible, and beyond the ability of the government to provide adequate security the Dil se Dil Independence Day Friendship Celebration has been postponed indefinitely. There is no way for it to occur, as planned, on the night of 14-15 August.

Dil se Dil in the Bombay Times

For India and Pakistan, the 60th anniversary of independence draws near. For Indians and Pakistanis, the first-ever joint celebration is also at hand.

As those of you who read this space know, the night of 14-15 August will witness Midnights Grandchildren coming together at an historic friendship concert held on one of the world’s most heavily militarized borders.

The media circus in advance of the event has begun, kicked off with today’s frontpage feature in the Bombay Times.

United Nations Millennium Campaign Joins the “Dil se Dil” Partnership

The Dil se Dill Independence Day Friendship Concert received a wonderful boost this week when the United Nations Millennium Campaign joined Friends Without Borders and Routes 2 Roots as a partner for producing the event.

We are tremendously excited to have the United Nations as a partner, both for the credibility it give to our initiative and because it give us an opportunity to help build public awareness for the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

Midnight’s Grandchildren

Sixty years and three generations after Independence, Indians and Pakistanis have never jointly celebrated the seminal political event that gave birth to both nations. This year, all that will change.

On the night of August 14th and into the early hours of August 15th, preeminent musicians and celebrity Masters of Ceremonies will come together across the India-Pakistan border to lead the youth of both countries into a new era of friendship and cultural interaction: Dil se Dil: Independence Day Friendship Celebration.

Friends Without Borders, Reruns

You loved the book, now see the movies.

As we embark on the Phase II of the Friends Without Borders Project, delivering letters of friendship from kids all over India to kids in Pakistan, I want to put our video and presentations at everyone’s easy disposal. I should have done this long ago.

Listed below are links to: our Public Service Announcement Television Commercial, which aired last year throughout India and Pakistan; a short history of Phase I of the project, made by Rahul Brown just before we crossed into Pakistan last year; and two slide presentations introducing our project and the World’s Largest Love Letter events.

Friends Without Borders in Asia Magazine

It’s a little awkward to get a byline on a story about one’s own project, but Friends Without Borders was asked by Asia Magazine to submit an article and we obliged. I wote the text and Maria Durana took and processed the photos. The article, which will span six-pages in “centerfold” format, to appear in the magazine’s March edition.

Asia Magazine does not publish online; but you can click on the image above (or here) for a reprint in PDF format.