On 11 April 1919, ILO’s constitution was adopted in Paris. 100 years later, the diversity and reach of ILO’s work will be showcased in a global live show, webcast from 24 locations in 24 hours, as part of the organisation’s centenary celebrations. The global show will stop-over in seven countries across Asia and the Pacific.
At 100 years young the International Labour Organization (ILO) is not just the UN’s oldest specialised entity, it has grown to stand among those with the greatest reach.
Acknowledging this particular strength, the ILO is marking its centenary with a day-long ‘virtual’ Global Tour, live-streaming special centenary events from 24 ILO offices around the world in a continuous, 24-hour webcast.
Twenty-four ILO offices will contribute an hour of live webcasting, each with a local flavour, creating a global picture of the diversity and range of the ILO’s work. The result will be an exhilarating multi-national, multi-lingual and multi-cultural journey through world of work themes - past, present and future – enlivened with music, dancing, balloons and birthday cake.
The Tour kicks off where the world’s day officially starts, on the International Date Line in Fiji, where the ILO’s Suva office is responsible for activities in 11 Pacific Island member States.
As with all the tour destinations, the Suva event will have the ILO’s constituents at its core – representatives of governments, workers and employers joining together on an equal footing, as they do with all the ILO’s activities and decisions. In Suva, they’ll be joined by the President of Fiji and Melanesian and Polynesian entertainers.
Next stop is Manila. The Global Tour producers have been encouraged to showcase local strengths and the Philippines – with a reputation for world-class entertainment talent – is kicking off with a shadow play by El Gamma Penumbra, grand champions from the Asia’s Got Talent TV show, who will perform a specially-created show using the ILO’s Centenary song, “We’ve Got a Vision”.
From Manila, the live-streamed show jumps to Beijing where it will explore the ILO’s history in China. Then off to Bangkok, Thailand – one of ILO’s founding member States, for an early “Songkran” celebration of the upcoming Thai New Year.
After a stop in Dhaka (Bangladesh), cameras will be rolling in Colombo where a theatre performance will give a glimpse of what the future of work could look like in Sri Lanka. The last Asian stop, will take place in New Delhi where Indian youths will voice their creative views on the world of work.
At 07:00 GMT the tour changes continent, off to Pretoria, followed by Antananarivo, Moscow, Amman, Beirut and Cairo, where the 4,000-year-old Pyramids will be the backdrop for a high-level celebration of music and speeches.
“The logistics of coordinating video production and live streaming in 24 locations has been challenging,” said Justin Smith, Senior Social Media Officer, ILO. “We decided to automate as much of the production work as possible by building a web application that would juggle the live-stream video feeds automatically, without anyone having to flip switches.”
In Europe, after visits to Kyiv and Turin, the event at HQ in Geneva is firmly focused on the ILO’s second century. A panel discussion, organized in partnership with the Financial Times, will bring together the Director-General, Guy Ryder, and key figures from the public and private sectors, to discuss building a sustainable, socially just, future of work. Informing the debate will be the conclusions of the report of the Global Commission on the Future of Work, published in January.
The Tour then moves – via Brussels and Abidjan – to its fifth continent, the Americas. After events in Brasilia and Buenos Aires it turns north, through Philadelphia to the UN Headquarters in New York for a ‘Centenary Fireside Chat’, discussing how the ILO can work best with other parts of the international system.
After a 23-hour whirlwind the webcast comes to rest in Peru at the ILO’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. There, a mural covering the entire ILO office building will be unveiled, ensuring the achievements of the past are permanently visible to inspire those building the world of work of the next hundred years. The ILO Centenary “Global Tour” will be webcast via www.ilo.org from 00.00 GMT on Thursday 11 April. (source: ILO)
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