Dan Eldon wanted to make the world a better place. When the photojournalist was killed by a mob in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, while covering a disastrous U.N. military operation, his mother, Kathy, knew she had unfinished work to do.
A few years later, Kathy Eldon launched Creative Visions Foundation which, on Oct. 2, will hold its second Turn on LA fundraiser, hosted by director Jon Turteltaub (husband of Kathy’s producer-daughter Amy), with Kweku Mandela — Nelson’s grandson — as special presenter, and performers including Aloe Blacc and spoken word poet IN-Q. The three honorees of the Dan Eldon Creative Activist Award will be CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, 17-year-old Pakistani women’s education activist Malala Yousafzai, and philanthropist and filmmaker Lehka Singh.
Singh’s 2012 doc, “Beyond Right & Wrong: Stories of Justice and Forgiveness,” tells the stories of rapprochement between victims and perpetrators of violence in the Rwandan genocide, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the troubles in Northern Ireland. “I was in Rwanda and I saw this woman whose five children had been murdered talking to the murderer and even sharing a soda with him, and I was like, how is that even possible?” Singh said. “How can people forgive like that? … This film is my inquiry into that.”
The first Turn on LA fundraiser raised $175,000 to support the org’s Creative Activist Program, which backs people worldwide working on arts and media projects to ignite change in the areas of human rights, education, health, the environment and empowerment of women. Funding also goes to the foundation’s school-based program, Rock Your World, which teaches students about the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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Filmmaking is part of Kathy Eldon’s pursuits as well. She’s in the final stages of development on “Journey Is the Destination,” a movie about her son’s life, and is hoping to announce more details at the fundraiser.
