The innovative sankirtan outreach project Fortunate People is inviting devotees to post videos of themselves and newcomers chanting the Hare Krishna mantra to its website fortunate-people.com, with an aim to gather 50,000 chants for ISKCON’s 50th anniversary.
Fortunate People is a UK-based project that allows distributors of Prabhupada’s books to keep in touch with people they’ve met on the street.
“We ask them to “Like” the Fortunate People Facebook page on their smartphones on the spot,” says book distributor and project manager Shaktyavesha Avatar Das. “Then we stay connected with them and share Krishna conscious culture with them through Facebook. The page has grown from 100 followers to nearly 5,000 today.”
During the December 2015 Prabhupada marathon, Fortunate People took things to the next level by filming those who just received a book chanting the Hare Krishna mantra for the first time. The videos are then uploaded to Facebook, where they’ve gone viral – the last one received 20,000 views, 1,000 likes and was shared more than 600 times in one day.
Now Fortunate People has launched its 50K Chants Campaign for ISKCON’s 50th anniversary. The campaign was presented at the International Leadership Sanga in Mayapur recently, where it was enthusiastically received by an audience of some 600 devotees including ISKCON leaders. It is now being officially promoted by the ISKCON 50 Committee.
Shaktyavesha Avatar is inviting everyone to add their chant on fortunate-people.com by filming either themselves or people they’ve met on the street chanting Hare Krishna.
“We explain to people that it’s to spread love and peace all over the world,” he says.
Devotees should then 1) Upload the chant video to Facebook, Instagram or Youtube 2) Share it to the Facebook.com/fortunatepeoplesmile page, and 3) Add the hashtag #fortunatepeople so that the project’s website fortunate-people.com can automatically find it.
All the videos that have been uploaded so far can be watched on the website, and are sure to lift your spirits – the sight of so many complete first-timers smiling, lauging and chanting Hare Krishna “for world peace” is heartwarming indeed.
The website also features a world map that shows which locations in the world have uploaded chants.
Shaktyavesha aims to reach 50,000 chants by July 13th 2016, the 50th anniversary of ISKCON’s inauguration. So far, only 163 chants have been uploaded, but the numbers are rocketing upwards fast.
“Bringing the Holy Name to Every Town and Village has never been so easy,” says Shaktyavesha. “We kindly invite you to take part in this offering to Srila Prabhupada.”
Source: http://iskconnews.org/global-50000-chants-campaign-launched-for-iskcon-50,5446/
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