For the last four years, since 2013, Tom Hiddleston has been one of the biggest advocates and ambassadors for the efforts put forward by UNICEF UK through a variety of different means, methods, and first hand experiences. Let’s take a look at them.
In January 2013, Tom travelled to Guinea in West Africa with Unicef. Over five days, he met with Guinean children, families and communities, saw several Unicef projects, and found out about their work in child protection, education, and water and sanitation.
Also in 2013, Tom participated in Unicef’s Live Below the Line Campaign, where he lived off of less than a pound a meal a day for five days. He tweeted each day of the event and how much it cost, and at the end said it was an incredibly humbling and sobering experience.
In 2015 and 2016, Tom made a major shift and began using his newly official status as Unicef ambassador to bring to light the struggles and sufferings of children and child soldiers, particularly in the country of South Sudan.
Tom went back to South Sudan for a few weeks in late 2016 too, to get a better grip of what advancements the South Sudanese had made as a country as well as continue the work he could do with Unicef and his documentary.
Here’s the thing: Tom recognizes that his job, and his place, is not to provide aide to the people that he meets with. His purpose is to provide a voice when so many are either unaware or chose to drown out the voices of those who need it. He is privileged, and he knows it. And he’s doing the best thing that he knows how to do, and that is to spread the word.
If you know anything about Tom, know that he’s someone extremely aware of his privilege as a white, male, upper-class, celebrity with a good educational background and a knack for words. But he is honest to god trying his best to DO something with all of that. And not just with Unicef and South Sudan, but with issues in increasing education tuition, with supporting the arts, with his feminism, with the environment, with everything issue you can think of.
And if you don’t believe me, take it from Tom himself.
“I’m someone who can write about [issues] and make people aware, but I’m not distributing vaccines; I’m not organizing transportation; I can’t make fortified milk for infants who are malnourished; I can’t build schools and find jobs and build training systems; I’m not a chemist; I’m not an engineer; I’m not a politician – I’m just in a position where people, some people, a few people, will read what I’ve got to say.”
So. Was his Golden Globes speech extremely well thought out or maybe worded the best it could possibly could be? No, because I really don’t think he expected to win. But those two minutes of his life are not reflective of the type of work that Tom does or the type of person he is. And that’s the truth.
And this is just Unicef. If y’all need a complete list of every humanitarian work or event Tom has ever done, I’ll need a few hours but I promise I will do it.
Oh!! I also completely forgot all of his Emergency Lesson videos, a campaign meant to bring to light how school children in other countries go about their day in comparison to hose of us in more developed areas:
Create a mess 