With holiday celebrations just around the corner, Amnesty International wants us to remember that not everyone will have the opportunity to spend time with family and friends.

For a Cossette-led campaign called “Wrap Hope,” the organization created bilingual TV and online spots and special campaign-themed wrapping paper with the goal of raising funds to help defend those who are unjustly imprisoned.

A 15-second ad presents a sample of the wrapping paper decorated with the hands of an unknown and faceless prisoner. The paper’s colourful stripes, beautiful on their own, are revealed to be the bars of a prison cell. The commercial ends by reminding viewers that “not everyone will see their family this year” and inviting them to donate to the organization, which has often come to the defence prisoners of conscience around the world.

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For Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, Amnesty International also ran radio spots, placed ads in the French newspaper La Presse, and attended a Christmas market in Sherbrooke, Que., to help raise awareness of its work. To help spread the message, it was joined by Imen Derouiche, a former prisoner of conscience in Tunisia who was liberated with the help of Amnesty International, and the wife of a man currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia.

Amnesty International sold nearly 200 rolls of the gift wrap to Cossette employees and its partners in support of the organization.

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