Lighting a Candle for a Better World

Singer-songwriter Wil Seabrook travels the world to promote kindness and decency by raising awareness of human rights.  

Founder and lead singer of Rock for Human Rights (R4HR), Wil Seabrook’s human rights advocacy informs his work.

“I got into music because I wanted to make the world a better place,” he says “and I wanted to inspire people the way that I was inspired by my heroes growing up. I wanted to figure out a really simple way to share information about human rights with people in a way that they would enjoy and understand and be able to use in their lives.”

His recent human rights tour in Taiwan—his second to that country—was an opportunity to do just that. In the week leading up to Human Rights Day, the annual celebration of the U.N.’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Seabrook performed concerts to hundreds of students at 20 schools and universities in Taipei, Hsinchu, Chiayi, Taichung and Kaohsiung.

Joining him in providing these workshops was the director of Youth for Human Rights Nepal, Rahul KC. The seminars were scheduled by the Church of Scientology and delivered with the help of interpreters from the Church. The finale was a performance at the International Human Rights Day celebration at the Church of Scientology Kaohsiung.

At each venue, he and Rahul KC delivered human rights seminars using the education materials of United for Human Rights.

“I wanted to figure out a really simple way to share information about human rights with people in a way
that they would enjoy and understand and be
able to use in their lives.” 

Last June, Seabrook and Rock for Human Rights performed at the Memphis in Poland Festival in the cities of Sopot and Gdansk, Poland. Between concerts, he delivered human rights workshops and training sessions, where he released the Polish translation of What Are Human Rights?—a booklet that illustrates the 30 rights enshrined in the UDHR.

 

 

Seabrook also participated in the 14th annual Human Rights Summit of Youth for Human Rights at the United Nations in August 2017. 

“At this international gathering of like-minded individuals, you could see a palpable sense of relief and excitement,” he said. What struck him was the “sense from each member of such a diverse gathering that they were thinking to themselves, ‘I’ve found my people!’

“Many members of my church were there because they had heard about human rights through the supportive work the Church does in that field. But most people there were from other faiths or had no specific affiliation. I met Christians, Buddhists, Bahá’ís, Sikhs and Muslims. They were all united in their belief that fundamental human rights belong to every single person on Earth and that teaching others the value of these rights is one of the most important things we could be doing.”

The summit brought home another point to Seabrook: “It’s good to be reminded of the basic goodness of people, and of how many there are in every corner of the world doing everything they can to make it a better place for all of us.” 

The Church of Scientology and Scientologists support United for Human Rights and its program for young people, Youth for Human Rights, the world’s largest nongovernmental human rights education campaign, reaching out in 195 countries in 27 languages and embraced by 2,300 activists, officials, groups and organizations. Their support of the initiative is inspired by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard’s conviction that “It is vital that all thinking men urge upon their governments sweeping reforms in the field of human rights.”

For more information, visit the Scientology website.