"What does a happy childhood consist of? When you act like you have a fever and can stay home all day long? When you open up the 10th present on your birthday or Christmas morning? Or if you have a fully set table every morning, noon and evening, so full that you can't even eat it all up? For many people that sounds normal but for the most it sadly sounds like a dream.
A happy and healthy childhood should not count as a privilege. Every child is entitled to go to school, have enough to eat and to just be a child. Unfortunately, this is not the case in many parts of the world. Circa 264 million children don't go to school, 168 million have to work in inhuman conditions and a total of 815 million people have to starve every day.
We want to change that and we want you to help us with that. Just as children are weak, children are strong.
I teamed up with unicef to plan this new campaign called UnicefYoung and we want as many people to help us. This project is aimed primarily at young people. It is so important to realize what is going on early.
Share this video with you friends, with your family or repost it on you account, it will only take a few seconds. Under the hashtag #UnicefYoung you can find all videos, photos and posts about this campaign.
Our plan is to help all the children in east- and central Africa with food, education, toys and clothes. All donations are split, 2/5 are spent on food, 2/5 on education and 1/5 on clothes and toys.
On the included link in the video description you can donate and help us to make some children happier.
Every cent will help."
Applause. I looked around in the room, seeing everyone else clapping their hands and smiling at me.
Right when Noah and I came back from the break, Viktoria told us that the editors had finished editing the first video in the break and that we already could see it. So, everyone from the first conference and a few more people, like the regisseur and the editors came together in the conference room again.
I don't know how often I already mentioned it but I just can't realize that this was happening and I guess I never will.
The video we just watched was the longest one, which I would also post on my social media accounts later. It would also be posted on all of the unicef accounts.
"How do you like it?" Viktoria asked with a satisfied smile. The people around me had meanwhile stopped applauding.
"It is good" I answered, looking to everybody "I actually don't really know what to say, it's amazing"
"Well, it is just a short advert video, but we are pleased to hear that you like it." Francesco said.
"I mean, it's the first time seeing me in a professional advert and campaign. It's a big thing for me" I said truthfully. I felt a bit like I had to defend myself in front of Francesco.
"Yeah it's a big thing for us too" he said with a sarcastic undertone in it. Every time he would say something it would come out with this unfriendly undertone and I just couldn't tell if it was on purpose or not. Either way I didn't really like Francesco. I didn't really like Andy too. Both of them spoke to me as if I was a small child and had a hard time understanding everything.
But I didn't want to be rude so I just speak as little as possible with both and try to answer politely. I mean it is still a great opportunity for me and I don't want it to be cancelled because I didn't get along with the boss.
Francesco asked some of the people to leave because now we would go on with the discussion about future projects and so. The room was actually quite full. Every chair was taken and a few people even stood in the room.
After the most of them left it was just the same people like earlier, Francesco, Martin, Rajesh, Caryl and Margarita. And, of course Noah and Viktoria.
"Ok so now we will first talk about the videos. Which is shown where and of course how it will work with your social media account. Martin and Margarita will explain it." Initiated Francesco and I looked over to Martin and Margarita, who were sitting diagonally across from me.
"Yeah. You already know that you won't be posting all of the videos on your accounts. We took the time and threw a look over your Instagram and Twitter profiles and think it is best when you first announce a cooperation with us and post the video afterwards." Martin explained.
"Ok, yeah. But why's that?" I asked. "Because people are more attentively when they know that there is still something to come. If they scroll down their feed and just see a video loading, the most people will probably just scroll past it. But when they see a picture first that basically says 'There's something coming' they are more curious to see what it is.". Within the 'There's coming something' Martin raised his fingers and made quotation marks. He seemed actually really nice and he talked to me normally.
He now looked at Margarita to symbolize her, that she should go on.
"We have a picture prepared, that we will send you later and right after the conference you can already post it.". Margarita had a rather deeper voice for a woman but that made it quite relaxing to listen to her.
All the other ones in the room just listened to what Martin and Margarita said except for Francesco, who was fumbling something in his briefcase.
"We will probably send you the video this evening and then you can post it already before going to bed tonight." Martin continued.
"Wow, that's pretty fast, isn't it? I thought it would take at least a few days or so to prepare the videos."
"Yes, that's because we have some pretty good editors" Caryl said with a proud smile.
"Exactly! And the videos are just one shot each and didn't really take long to be edited." Martin went on. "So, before you will post the video on your accounts we will send an email to some prominent people that work with us like Orlando Bloom and Nicole Kidman about the campaign and then they will probably write a post about it"
"What leads us to our next point" Margarita threw in and I looked to her again. "The AMA's are this weekend and you will hold a speech."
"Yeah I will" I nervously laughed. The thought of me standing in front of the big hall and everybody looking to me still made me a little tense.
"You won't be standing alone on the stage but you will be speaking alone of course. There will just be the introducer, whoever it will be, which will ask you to come to the front and then stand a few steps behind you when you hold your speech. We will send you a list about the few things that you must say. It's only going to be a few notes because we don't want you to memorize a prepared speech. This would probably sound too captured. If you have just a few points of things to say, it will sound more freely and natural." Margarita clarified.
"How long will the speech expectedly be?" I asked curious. I really did not want to stay on the stage for like 10 minutes. I mean, I would but who knows what all could go wrong in ten minutes.
"Not too long. I think it will be 4 minutes at the most, right?" Margarita said and looked at Martin who just nodded.
Ok I think I could deal with four minutes standing on stage.
Martin then went on and explained me a few more things like, that he and Margarita will be at the AMA's too as representatives of unicef. He then gave the word to Rajesh.
"To come to our last point of todays meeting, our future cooperations. When we see that this campaign is going good and successfully, we will meet again and shoot some more advertisements. We also plan on visiting a village in Africa, suffering from poverty. It is just a plan but if we will do it someday, we will shoot a short documentary movie about this campaign."
"That sounds great. I would love to visit a village in Africa to help." I said positively. I wanted to add something but got interrupted by Francesco. "Seems like the meeting is coming to an end" he said with a fake smile. "I'm really sorry but I have to go now. I think you are in good hands with Martin, uploading the picture. I'm really looking forward to seeing the results of our campaign" he said and I doubted that he was sorry to go. But I wasn't sad about it either.
I shook his hand, gave him the same fake smile back and thanked him again for this opportunity, it would be rude to not thank him even if I don't like him.
The others I gave my hand normally and thanked them each.
Then I sat back down and Martin showed me the picture. It was just a simple picture where everything was held in this typical unicef color, a light blue. In a big font there was the unicef logo and even bigger was the #UnicefYoung. On the bottom of the picture, there stood a few more smaller things.
He sent it to me and I immediately posted it on my Twitter and Instagram accounts. He then explained to me a last time what I had to do when they sent me the main video later.
We then said goodbye and Viktoria leaded me and Noah out of the building and also shook our hands as a goodbye.
Noah and me then went to our hotel again to freshen up a bit and then went into the city again and spend the rest of the day there.
We spent the majority of the time in a park, near our hotel with something to eat and to drink, talking about the day and about how awkward it was that Francesco seemed so nice at the beginning but kinda rude at the end.At least, I was not the only one who noticed it.
We went back to the hotel at 6:30 pm because the weather got worse and it slowly began to rain.
Back in the hotel I checked if unicef had sent me the video, and they indeed did. Not that I expected them not to. I did as I was told and uploaded the video on my accounts.
I didn't want to just wait in front of my phone for any reaction, so I just put on some music, this time the new album by Bazzi, and went into the bathroom to take off my makeup.
Half an hour later I checked my phone again, excited to see some reactions. I know that I don't have a huge number of followers on my social media, but still, 17k was not a little too.
And by now the unicef accounts must have posted the picture too, so I expected to have gained a few new followers.
But what I saw when I unlocked my phone shocked me.
More than 2000 people subscribed to my account, only in the past 30 minutes. That was insane.
And I soon found out the reason behind this follower wave.
@ShawnMendes reposted a video you posted:
"Such an important message! I will absolutely take part in this project and you should too"
As I read the name my heart stooped a beat. I definitely did not expect that.
@ShawnMendes follows you
