World Yoga Day 2012 - Sunday 26th February 2012

 

 

For the fifth year running, Heather George and Tony Davis organised special Yoga classes as part of World Yoga Day to raise money to support human rights on Sunday 26th February at River Bourne Health Club, Chertsey.  The classes were taken by local Yoga teachers: Debbie Wherlock, Jean-Claude Rawady, Alex Imbastari and Becky Lennox.

 

 42 people took part altogether raising £460.  After the class we had a lovely lunch in River Bourne’s newly refurbished bistro.  The event was reported in the Informer.


World Yoga Day is a 2 hour Yoga practice from 11am to 1 pm in every time zone around the world thus leading to 24 hours of continuous Yoga. It started in New Zealand, then crossed Australia, Thailand, mainland Asia and then Scandinavia, the Middle East & Africa and into mainland Europe. As we finished we will handed over to South America, Canada and the USA.

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Photos from World Yoga Day 2012

 

This year the chosen charity is Reporters without Borders.

 

It was particularly poignant so shortly after the sad deaths of Marie Colvin, The Times journalist, and French photographer Remi Ochlik in Homs in Syria a few days before.  Reporters Without Borders have been campaigning to bring attention to Syria’s treatment of media workers.  7 others have been killed there since the uprising began.  They campaigned to get the other journalists Edith Bouvier, William Daniels and Paul Conroy safely evacuated from Homs.  Fortunately, thanks to the bravery and selflessness of the Free Syrian Army these journalists have been helped to escape to Lebanon.

 

The donations from WYD 2012 will be used for Emergency Desks for journalists. The desks address a wide range of needs and above all intervene in emergencies, providing legal support and financial aid to journalists in need or to their families, helping journalists in danger to find a safe refuge, helping journalists to apply for asylum, and providing material assistance to news media that have problems. It is a central but still little-known component of what Reporters Without Borders does to help journalists and bloggers in difficulty.