Today, over 800 student activists converged on Capitol Hill for the largest lobby day to prevent genocide in history.  

The students were marching to the Hill at 8:30am to meet with their elected officials and to push Congress to implement the recommendations of the Genocide Prevention Task Force (GPTF) report.   As part of an innovative partnership between STAND, the student led division of the Genocide Intervention Network, and WITNESS, the international human rights organization that pioneered video advocacy, the student activists collected 500 video messages from their student body and community.   For the first time, these messages were edited to create individual videos for Senators, which the students began hand-delivering this morning.   View personalized videos for Senators here:  

http://hub.witness.org/STAND-STUDENT-VIDEOS

 With this campaign we are seeing the 'YouTube generation' in action - and today, we're seeing them change how citizens are lobbying Congress.   Less than a month after the Obama adminsitration unveiled the Sudan policy review, these students are reminding their elected officials and President Obama of the moral and political imperative to bring peace in Sudan today and ensure that other similar conflicts don't occur in the future.  

This is the first time in US history where advocates will create a unique video for each Senator - 100 in total - featuring voices from their student body and local community.    

If you'd like to learn more about how video is being used in this massive, cohesive push from the anti-genocide community calling for comprehensive legislation to prevent and stop genocide and mass atrocities, please visit http://hub.witness.org/stand-lobby-day-2009.