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Dignity Day’ Organized in India; Mr. Malvinder Singh and John Hope Bryant Lead Effort

Gurgaon (Haryana), India, December 2, 2006 — The Forum of Young Global Leaders (YGLs), a foundation which works in close cooperation with the World Economic Forum, Global Dignity and HOPE Global Initiatives organized the ‘Dignity Day – India’ program at the Vasant Valley School in New Delhi, on November 25th, 2006. During ‘Dignity Day-India’, an initiative of YGLs,  members fanned out to area schools and NGOs to talk and share with the youth of India the concept of Global Dignity – a worldwide awareness campaign to implement the universal right of all human beings to lead a dignified and empowered! life. The YGLs shared their personal experiences with the students, including their successes, failures, and aspects of self respect, dignity and human rights.

In India, Mr. Malvinder Singh, YGL and CEO & Managing Director of Ranbaxy, the largest pharmaceutical company in India and one of the largest in the world, took the initiative to organize ‘Dignity Day-India’ in partnership with the Forum of Young Global Leaders, Global Dignity and HOPE Global Initiatives at Vasant Valley School, New Delhi. The participating YGLs represented by 8 countries are the rising stars from business and politics, leading academics, artists, activists and journalists, all under the age of 40.

Commenting on the occasion, Mr. Malvinder Singh said, “Today’s youth is tomorrow’s future. Everyone has the right to live a dignified and empowered life and that’s what we want to promote around the world. Our endeavor is to create awareness among the children on their right to dignity and self respect, enabling them to become the torch bearers to further this global movement.”

During the course of the ‘Dignity Day-India’ program, the YGLs met and interacted with more than 100 students from 3 different schools of the city, representing Vasant Valley School, Sanskriti School and Sardar Patel Vidyalaya. After the sessions on Dignity with the students, the YGLs visited 2 NGOs (Ritinjali & Khushii) in less privileged areas and engaged in discussions with youth on several aspects relevant to India’s challenges. These NGOs deal with education, vocational training and social upliftment of under privileged children, and one, Khushii, specifically deals with homeless children, of which there are more than 1 million in Delhi alone. During the course of the day, the YGLs closely interacted with a group of teenage children from both the privileged and the under privileged segments of society, with both having and showing the same measure of Dignity.

The YGLs, led by Mr. John Hope Bryant, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Operation HOPE, USA, who is one of the three founding members of the Global Dignity Project and Taskforce, shared the 5 principles of Dignity with the children. He along with the other YGLs, engaged the children in a dialogue about how to respect and reinforce the universal right to dignity of each human being irrespective of the social and cultural circumstances.

Mr. Malvinder Singh and Mr. John Hope Bryant on behalf of the Forum of YGLs rolled out to the students a program to carry forward the ‘Dignity Day-India’ initiative every year. As a part of this engagement plan students will be selected as ‘ Dignity Leaders’ on the basis of essay writing competitions and evaluation of social project work over a period of the next 6 months.

The students selected as Dignity Champions:

  •            Will get acknowledged by the Global Dignity project and the Forum of Young Global Leaders for their excellent thoughts on the aspect of dignity.

  •            Will have the opportunity to be Dignity ambassadors by either attending the annual meeting of the YGLs at Oxford in 2007,
               or traveling with the YGLs to different parts of the world where similar Dignity Day’s are to be conducted.

The Forum of Young Global Leaders is a Foundation set up in partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF) to bring together the world’s most outstanding leaders, aged 40 years or younger to collectively work towards a better future. Each year it nominates around 200 YGL to be engaged for a period of five years, ultimately forming a community of 1,111 by 2009.

The YGLs who were present and participated in the Dignity Day-India program were:

  •            Malvinder Singh, CEO & Managing Director, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., India

  •            John Hope Bryant, Silver Rights Activist, Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Operation HOPE, USA 
  •            Nikhil Meswani, Executive Director, Reliance
    Industries Ltd., India   
  •            Michelle Guthrie, CEO, Star Group Ltd., Hong Kong
  •            Penny Low, Member of Parliament, Singapore   
  •            Ekta Kapoor, Creative Director, Balaji Telefilms, India 
  •            Matthew Bishop, Chief Business Editor, The Economist, USA

  •            Prasoon Joshi, Regional Creative Director, McCann Erickson, India

  •            Juan Jose Nieto, Chairman & CEO, Palmera Capital Services, Spain

  •            Nimah Nawwab, Poet, Saudi Arabia

  •            Sonu Jain, Special Correspondent, Indian Express, India

  •            Mack Gill, President, SunGard Offshore Services, USA

About Global Dignity

Co-founded by Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, John Hope Bryant from Operation HOPE, and Professor Pekka Himanen, University of Art & Design Helsinki and Visiting Professor at Oxford University, the mission of Global Dignity is to implement globally the universal right of every human being to lead a dignified life. It is an autonomous, non-profit and non-partisan project linked to the 2020 process of the World Economic Forum’s Forum of Young Global Leaders, where young global leaders from politics, business, academia, and civil society have joined together to work for the improvement of the state of the world and people based on 5 principles of dignity. For more information on about Global Dignity, see www.globaldignity.org or www.younggloballeaders.org.      

About HOPE Global Initiatives

HOPE Global Initiatives was developed out of the organization’s leadership role in hosting Ambassadors and Heads of State visiting Southern California, as well as the founder’s former role with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Geneva, Switzerland, as their first ever goodwill ambassador to the United States.  The role of HOPE Global Initiatives is to promote and advocate the benefits of education, financial literacy, self-reliance, economic empowerment and dignity as tools for vastly improving the quality of life in developing countries, with a particular focus on developing countries on the African continent. The role has expanded to serve underserved communities throughout the world. HOPE Global Initiatives is a program of Operation HOPE.

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