Jacqueline Fernandez and other celebrities join Habitat for Humanity for Young Leaders Build 2016
Manila (29 March 2016) – Bollywood actress Jacqueline Fernandez and other Asian celebrities are joining Habitat for Humanity to rally youth in the Asia-Pacific region to volunteer, fundraise and speak out for the need for decent homes as a way out of poverty.
A new video featuring nine Asian celebrities has been released, encouraging youth to support the annual Habitat Young Leaders Build campaign. These celebrities include Bollywood actors Jacqueline Fernandez and Madhavan; Cantopop star Wilfred Lau; media personality Whulandary Herman and singer vanessaTM. from Indonesia; from Nepal, actress Anna Sharma, popular VJ Sanjay Gupta and Scout leader Prakash Pandey; and Korean actor Seojin Lee.
View the Habitat Young Leaders Build Celebrity Video at: http://youtu.be/mafrGauAceU
“Our celebrity ambassadors are a tremendous help, energizing young volunteers that want to see positive change in Asia and the Pacific,” said Rick Hathaway, Asia-Pacific vice president, Habitat for Humanity International. “We hope that one million people will be a part of this year’s Young Leaders Build, with everyone sharing the desire to build strength, stability and self-reliance through shelter.”
In addition to the video, celebrities are supporting Habitat Young Leaders Build in various ways.
Actress Jacqueline Fernandez is organizing #JacquelineBuilds on 9 April in Chennai, India to help families rebuild homes that were destroyed by massive floods last year. Jacqueline is also supporting Habitat through her social media channels.
Nepali youth ambassadors and media personalities VJ Sanjay Gupta, model-actress Anna Sharma, and model Ayushma Desraj Joshi Shrestha are supporting HYLB in the capital, Kathmandu and elsewhere. Nepal Scouts representative Prakash Pandey and other volunteer scouts will take part in house construction and advocacy activities.
Film and TV actor Chunhee Lee is promoting a “calligraphy campaign” as part of #HabitatYLB awareness-raising activities in Korea. More than 700 young people have already participated in the campaign, writing notes about ’building hope through Habitat’ and sharing it with their social media friends and followers.
Actor-singer Wilfred Lau from Hong Kong joined 150 volunteers to build houses in Guangdong, China last weekend. Watch his building video on Habitat Hong Kong’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/HabitatHK/videos/1717188748561716/.
Earlier in March, Japanese supermodel Arisa Kamada traveled with a Habitat for Humanity Global Village volunteer team to India to build houses. On 21 March, distance runner Yusuke Ogura participated in “Habitat Ekiden”, a long-distance relay road race in Tokyo organized by Habitat campus chapters.
Whulandary Herman, model and former Miss Universe-Indonesia 2013 and Indonesian singer-songwriter vanessaTM. are actively promoting HYLB. Vanessa, who composed the theme song for HYLB, is speaking to youth through school road shows and to the public through radio talk shows.
The Young Leaders Build campaign will reach its peak on 2 April 2016, when hundreds of thousands of young people will take part in simultaneous house builds and other activities across Asia-Pacific, or will go online in support of the campaign. A total of 16 countries and one Special Administrative Region (SAR), including Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Fiji, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam are part of Habitat’s largest youth movement in the region.
This past year’s campaign, then known as Habitat Youth Build, brought together over 669,000 volunteers and participants from 15 countries and one SAR in the Asia-Pacific region, to help over 13,000 families begin their journey to secure safe, decent homes. Volunteers worked on 9,498 houses, and raised 559,173 towards programs to alleviate poverty housing. This youth initiative has taken place for five consecutive years.
For more information on Habitat Young Leaders Build online – http://www.give2habitat.org/campaign/hlyb16. Join the Habitat Young Leaders Build community on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/habitatyouthbuild/, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/habitatylb/ and Twitter, hashtag #HabitatYLB.