The Estonian-born Hollywood actor, Johann Urb (‘Zoolander’, ‘2012’, ‘American Siege’), has become the latest international celebrity to join the ranks of ‘Let’s Do It World’, the largest peacetime global civic action movement and recent winner of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Mobilization award for the World Cleanup Day campaign.
Ahead of the first coordinated World Cleanup Day in 2018, Urb helped promote the movement’s activity in the US, when he was living in California, assisting the US ‘National Cleanup Day’ team.
Now, this year, he’s accepted the invitation to act as an official ‘World Cleanup Day Ambassador’, lending his considerable energy and enthusiasm to drive the initiative to address the global mismanaged waste crisis.
Urb sees clear congruence between the movement’s overall mission to clean up outwardly and his own mission for humanity to clean up inwardly.
At a meeting in his native city of Tallinn, Estonia, he listened to how World Cleanup Day has continued to grow as a movement of conscience and awareness-raising, reaching tens of millions of people globally over the years.
Urb’s own mission, alongside wife Rachel Pringle, has seen him move more into the spiritual realm of practicing deep connection to self, to community, and to collective growth and wisdom.
He took time out from his recent involvement with Vishen Lakhiani’s Tallinn-based ‘Mindvalley’ to discover how his own values and those of ‘Let’s Do It World’ combine towards improving the physical, spiritual, and emotional connection we as humans have with each other and the environment.
“Growing community through shared experiences is the most natural thing, bringing people together to achieve greatness and closeness,” explains Urb. “The passion is alive in me – my wife and I work with people to do cleanups from the inside out, and World Cleanup Day encourages us to address our outward environment.
When I look inside myself, acknowledge everything that’s within, and give myself permission to feel all of my feelings, I can let the ‘garbage’ out and recycle that energy as a positive force. When we all do that, we can then put forward a collective, creative energy that changes our relationship to self and to others, everywhere.
It’s a perfect fit – we clean from inside, we clean the outside! Both parts are intricately linked, a part of the greater whole.”
In exchange for promoting the activities and values of World Cleanup Day itself, Urb wishes to bring a message of collaboration and unity through his own projects and has offered to introduce his ‘Pyramid Breath’ technique into the team to share with World Cleanup Day’s whole global network.
“A shared visceral experience beyond the mind, a physical experience, involving activities within teams, helps us to get out of our heads and into our bodies and connected to our souls. When people share that experience, the power, the vision and the resolve of the group magnifies.
I want us all to open our eyes and see the world in front of us. Empowered action, creative meditation, feeling a true connection to it all – that’s what I want to bring to the World Cleanup Day movement, a real sense of togetherness,” he adds.
Urb firmly believes that by bringing in the values of ‘Inner/Outer Cleanup’, we can make a real and lasting difference through daily practice, not just once a year!
“We’re designed to collaborate, not to compete with each other. The idea of growing community with a shared practice based on a shared vision, tying it together, is what I live for. We’re better together! ‘As within, without – as above, so below!’ represents pure alignment with our joint values,” concludes Urb.
Heidi Solba, President and Head of Global Network at ‘Let’s Do It World!’, shares her excitement at Urb’s renewed involvement as Ambassador. “It’s so heartwarming to hear others speak the same language of care for, and connection with, the environment through a set of shared inner values. To discover someone who treats the environment with the same care as they treat themself and others is a blessing.
Our new World Cleanup Day Ambassador, Johann Urb, represents all that, with his depth of commitment to his soul and to humanity. This correlates perfectly with how we seek to interact with our environment on a soul level. Johann's philosophy matches perfectly with the values we hold dear in our movement and we're so excited that he's committed his energy towards spreading our mutual message of growth together,” adds Solba.
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This year’s World Cleanup Day takes place on Saturday 16 September.
You can get involved here - and register with your local team.
Let’s do it, world! Let’s do it together!
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