In this world there are thousands and thousands of people working to make a difference, working to help other people regardless of creed, religion, or political affiliation. And it is of those people that Goodness TV wants to talk about.

Halo, kind viewers, and welcome to today’s Good People, Good Works featuring the first in a two-part series on Internet television station GoodnessTV which airs inspirational programs on noble individuals and groups who are uplifting our world through their sincere efforts to better humanity. The station’s founder is Laurent Imbault, a noted Canadian actor and comedian.

Mr. Imbault starred in the Canadian television drama “Watatatow,” a long-running series that addressed important social issues faced by youth. He has also appeared in films produced both in Canada and the USA. What inspired Mr. Imbault to create GoodnessTV? Surprisingly, he realized the need for such a station after speaking with his elderly mother.

My mother, she’s now 95 and three years ago she broke her hip and I spent a lot of time at the hospital with her. We talked a lot. At some point she said, “You know, I’m happy I am going to die soon, and I am not going to see all of this anymore.” And I asked, "What are you talking about, Mama? What is all of ‘this’?"

And she said “You know, all of this violence and all the bad news in the world.” She said, “I am tired of seeing this; I don’t see that there is hope.” And I thought, "Wait a second, Mama.” I said, "There’s hope."

And then I realized that we live in a world where we’re lacking positive input. There is no place where I can just relax and see good news, and think that maybe we’re going to make it as a human race!

So I came back and I told my wife, “Why don’t we do something? Why don’t we start a television station of good news, only good news?” And it turned out that it was easier to do it on the Internet. So I met some young programmers and I talked to them about the project, and everybody was really enthusiastic, so we started Goodness TV. What is the mission of Mr. Imbault’s television station?

Basically, the mission is to talk about people that are working to make this world a better place. It’s really dedicated to good news. The people I meet, the people I meet in my everyday life are good people. And basically there are millions of good people working to help others and working towards the good of others.

So GoodnessTV is basically about those people, whether they are individuals, whether they are working within the frameworks of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or the United Nations or Oxfam, or whether they are working within societies.

A lot of corporations are totally involved in their environment and help people in all kinds of projects, and we never hear about these corporations. We never hear about these people because there’s nowhere that you can hear about them.

With the help of several professionals who generously volunteered their time and expertise, Mr. Imbault developed GoodnessTV and quickly got the station up and running. The official launch was last September, so September 2009. And we launched the official French website. The English website was launched the first week or second week of January 2010.

We’re about 10 people now around the table, and I am totally amazed because nobody gets paid. Everybody’s working volunteer and pro-bono. And everybody shares ideas, everybody is really enthusiastic, and hopefully, as it grows, it’s just going to grow by itself.

All are welcome to introduce their work to the world on GoodnessTV. How does one get their show broadcast by the station? There’s three points of entry for GoodnessTV. Individuals, you and me and anybody that’s watching, can come and create a profile exactly like on YouTube, and upload videos that they feel are important or significant to them.

One very important thing is that all the videos on GoodnessTV have to be watched and approved by my people. We will not broadcast everything; it has to be within the framework of the mission of Goodness TV. So individuals can come in and create profiles and upload videos they feel are important to them, and they want other people to see and share those videos.

NGO’s, foundations, non-profit organizations can come and create profiles. And those two points of entry are free for everybody, so it’s free for individuals and it’s free for NGOs and non-profit organizations. Corporations, on the other hand, can do exactly the same thing, but at the same time they have to have a profile. So for instance, a car company could not just advertise on Goodness TV. The car company has to have a profile, and the profile has to be within the mission of Goodness TV.

After this brief message we’ll return to our fascinating interview with Laurent Imbault, founder of GoodnessTV. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Good People, Good Works, as we continue our program featuring Laurent Imbault, a noted Canadian actor and comedian who has started a unique Internet television station, GoodnessTV, which focuses on the goodness in life.

I am basically a media person. I’ve always been in front of cameras. I’m not afraid to be today in front of a camera, and I’m quite at ease with cameras. We’ve produced theater; we’ve produced small videos on all kinds of things. So it’s a whole experience for me to be able to finally put together all these experiences. So GoodnessTV for me is the sum total of all my experiences as an actor, as a producer, as a human being.

The GoodnessTV website is in French and English, but plans are in the works to make the site more accessible to a global audience by adding other languages as well.

The programmers have so far created a template. So now we can add a language very easily. I would love to have at least Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic, which are the six official United Nations languages, but we can have video. Somebody wrote to me the other day and said, "Could we have videos in Quechua?" which is the language of the Indians in Northern Peru.

And I said, "Well, why not? If somebody watches those videos in Quechua, I can certainly broadcast videos in Quechua." We’ve added recently the Hindi category, so we have videos in Hindi. We have videos in seventeen languages but the website is only officially in two languages. But we’ll add languages as they come along.

Mr. Imbault’s next GoodnessTV project involves producing his own original shows about benevolent individuals and organizations that are contributing towards the progress of humanity and the world.

So what we’d really like to do is also produce. So we want to have a daily broadcast. We want to produce videos with NGOs (non-governmental organizations). A lot of NGOs treat the Internet as a reading media and not as a cinema. To me it’s a cinema media, it’s a new media.

A lot of NGOs don’t have the capacity, the knowhow or the personnel to produce for this new medium. It’s a brand new medium, with an attention span of four, five minutes maximum. I find that NGOs are not quite there yet. They don’t know how to use this medium yet. So, hopefully, what I’d like to do is produce also a lot of videos for NGOs, in order for them to spread the word about what that they’re doing.

I am going to Africa in the summertime and we’re visiting four countries in Africa. And really what I want to do is go in the field and ask those people, “What is working?” If I see a smile of a child, if I see happiness, I know that you’re doing good work.

The response to GoodnessTV has been remarkable, with viewers from around our globe watching the posted videos.

We have all kinds of viewers, and again I am totally flabbergasted. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and look at my Google report, and I have people from a hundred countries. I would never have thought in my wildest dreams that I could reach out and talk and communicate with people from a hundred countries that I don’t know.

Sometimes I get people from Yemen, I get people from Saudi Arabia, I mean they’re foreign countries to me. And I go “Wow,” I got somebody from Japan, and people from Southeast Asia. They come because they find something there that relates to them, that talks to them. And that’s how I know that my idea is a universal idea, and that the site exists beyond me.

Our world is increasingly getting closer through the advancement of communication technologies. Laurent Imbault feels strongly that this is a wonderful trend that can only mean great things for us all. I truly believe that we are the generation that can put an end to extreme poverty. The human race today is at a point where it’s never been before. We have never been connected like this in the whole of history.

We have never lived the way we’re living now, with the capacity of touching people hundreds, thousands of miles away, of communicating, picking up the phone. And my son is traveling now in India and Thailand and I can see him. He connects on the Internet. The technology today is unique in the whole of the human race, of the development of history.

How did the station help a teacher in India? How was it able to bring together the people of India and Bolivia? Find out by joining us again next Sunday on Good People, Good Works for part two of our engaging discussion with Laurent Imbault. Many thanks Laurent Imbault and dedicated, kind-hearted associates for starting GoodnessTV, which brings happiness to viewers and makes our world a more beautiful place to live.

For more details on GoodnessTV, please visit: www.GoodnessTV.org

Our appreciation enlightened viewers for your company on today’s program. Up next is The World Around Us, after Noteworthy News. May we all enjoy abundance, friendship and joy each day of our lives.