‘My Friend’ tolerance campaign is about way more than selfies

Organizers of the religious tolerance-promoting “My Friend” campaign have big plans.

While it will start by encouraging people of different religions to take selfies with each other and post them on social media with the campaign’s hashtag, organizers told a group at the American Center on Wednesday that that’s only the beginning.

Over the next year they hope to spread their message on television channels and recruit people into a network of activists who will promote interfaith dialogue and tolerance in the long term. They even have a theme song, which they played to an assembled crowd of about 50 people at the center.

Over the course of an hour, Rohingya activist Wai Wai Nu and her colleagues outlined the plans in a power point presentation in English while speaking in Burmese. They wore t-shirts designed for the cause and had a guitar-strumming singer accompany them to play the theme song on a small stage.

Like the “Flower Speech” campaign, “My Friend” hopes to counterbalance the spread of hate speech online, especially between Muslims and Buddhists, a rift that has grown worse with the Rohingya crisis in Rakhine State.

On Friday, the campaign will take to People’s Park at 5pm for its official launch.

Photo: Facebook / My Friend