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The Genocide Education Project
Established
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The Genocide
Education Project proudly announces its formal establishment as
a non-profit educational organization and the recent hiring of
Sara Cohan as its Education Director.
The mission of The Genocide
Education Project is to assist educators in teaching about human
rights and genocide, particularly the Armenian Genocide, by
developing and distributing instructional materials, providing
access to teaching resources and organizing educational
workshops.
"We're excited that The Genocide
Education Project has become a full-fledged non-profit
organization, and that Sara Cohan, an exceedingly qualified and
enthusiastic educator has come on board," said Raffi Momjian,
Executive Director. "We're eager to put into motion many of the
ideas we've been developing to encourage educators to teach the
lessons of genocide to their students."
In addition to reaching out to
public school districts about the importance of genocide and
human rights education, organizing workshops for teachers,
distributing resources and lesson plans to be used in the
classroom, The Genocide Education Project maintains a website at
www.TeachGenocide.org. This cyber resource
library was published specifically for teachers, providing
resources for classroom use about the Armenian Genocide and
other gross human rights violations.
The Genocide Education Project has
published a comprehensive binder for educators that includes
step-by-step lessons to use in the classroom as well as
information about other curriculum, videos, books, and
discussion topics. The binder, "Human Rights and
Genocide: A Case Study of the First Genocide of the 20th
Century" is sponsored by the San Francisco Unified
School District and was developed in close cooperation with San
Francisco high school history teachers.
Sara Cohan, the organization's new
Education Director, was a classroom teacher in Florida for five
years. She has a Master's Degree in Social Science Education,
received a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship, and served as the
Research Fellow at Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern
Poverty Law Center. Cohan also served on state and national
education committees and was a research associate at the
Armenian National Institute. After serving briefly as a
volunteer for The Genocide Education Project, she welcomed the
opportunity to serve the organization in a more comprehensive
manner.
"I am looking forward to serving
an organization with the mission of The Genocide Education
Project," said Cohan. "Incorporating human rights and genocide
education in the classroom is an important step in training
young people to be proactive when genocidal events occur in the
future."
The Genocide Education Project
began seven years ago as the Genocide Curriculum Project when
San Francisco Bay Area Armenian-American community members recognized that the Armenian
Genocide was generally not being taught in public schools,
despite a 15-year old California law mandating instruction of the
Armenian Genocide, an effort was conceived to reach out to
school districts, reminding them of the need for instruction on
this crucial part of modern history. With the publication of
the "Human Rights and Genocide" lesson plans and
TeachGenocide.org website, volunteers began the process of
establishing a new organization whose mission is to help
institutionalize public education about the Armenian Genocide
and the problem of genocide and human rights violations.
Volunteers from Southern California, New York, Washington DC and
Chicago joined the effort to reach school districts all over the
country, and the process of establishing a new organization and
receiving non-profit status began in 2004. Tax-exempt, 501(c)(3)
status is now pending and expected to be complete within the
coming year. For more information about the efforts of The
Genocide Education Project please visit their website at
www.GenocideEducation.org.
The Genocide Education
Project is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization that assists educators in
teaching about human rights and genocide, particularly the
Armenian Genocide, by developing and distributing instructional
materials, providing access to teaching resources and organizing
educational workshops. |
