Amnesty International Extends Deadline on Hate Crimes Project

[~Julie Phineas~]

In September 2007, a man was murdered outside of a nightclub in a city in Brazil because he was openly gay.

Although it is known who is responsible, an arrest has never been made. The man who was murdered was a best friend of movie director M Pink Christofalo. Shortly after his murder, in efforts to stop situations like this from happening, Christofalo put out a message asking for any victims of hate crime to contact her. The message went out through a local radio broadcast in the only available time slot Christofalo could get - the twilight hours. Despite the randomness of the radio spot, there were thousands of responses to her message via telephone and email. What was more astounding was that many, if not most, were from kids and teens.

Making a commitment to help the children of Brazil, Christofalo comitted to a project which would raise awareness of the situation and bring about change in the country.

The project gained the backing of Amnesty International, who is offering a sizeable grant towards the project, provided that Christofalo has her crew in Brazil by a certain date. Unfortunately for Christofalo, that date has since passed, and the crew is still in the U.S. The crew needs a total of $15,000 to make the journey.

With the economy as it stands finding funding for projects such as this is becoming increasingly difficult.

An initial investor in the film backed out on funding the project just days before the crew was set to leave. Short term fund raising efforts have raised $5, 500 so far, yet Christofalo finds herself $9,500 short of her goal and time running out on the Amnesty grant

Amnesty International has extended the groups final deadline to June 23rd, when they must be in Brazil to receive the grant for production.

Should they not reach Brazil in time, the entire project will come to a halt. Unfortunately, there have been several murders and suicides since the initial radio spot, and those who have contacted the project are waiting for a miracle, for someone to show the world what is really going on in their country.

With less than one week to the deadline, Christofalo is open to donations of all sizes from one dollar and up to make their goal and get to Brazil.

Donations can be made at www.ilivekind.org through June 22nd.

Anyone interested in helping the project is encouraged to forward this article, post to your blogs and websites, or share on your social networking profiles.