special taped message from Zlata Filipoviċ

Transcription

1 She was separated from her family, placed in a camp, and forced to work the Cambodian rice fields. His father helped thousands of refugees survive in Rwanda and the story was told in the movie Hotel Rwanda. She is a survivor of the War in Sarajevo, Activist, Author of the International Bestseller Zlata s Diary. He is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, Author, Model, Actor and star of the movie The Good Lie. She was born in a Cambodian refugee camp. She and her family escaped to the US and she then became one of the Freedom Writers. Erin Gruwell, teacher and New York Times bestselling author of The Freedom Writers Diary, will moderate a high powered panel discussion with internationally renowned survivors of genocides with a special taped message from Zlata Filipoviċ

2 A special thank you to Utica National Insurance Group for being a true partner in education and helping to make this panel discussion possible at Westmoreland Central School.

3 Erin Gruwell Erin Gruwell is a teacher, an education activist, and the founder of the Freedom Writers Foundation. She created the Freedom Writer Methods, a progressive teaching philosophy and curricula designed to achieve excellence from all students. By fostering an educational philosophy that values and promotes diversity, Gruwell transformed her students lives. She encouraged them to rethink rigid beliefs about themselves and others, reconsider daily decisions, and ultimately rechart their futures. With Gruwell s support, they chose to forego teenage pregnancy, drugs, and violence to become aspiring college students, published writers, and catalysts for change. They dubbed themselves the Freedom Writers - in homage to civil rights activists The Freedom Riders - and published a book. Inspired by Anne Frank, Erin and her students captured their collective journey in The Freedom Writers Diary. Through poignant student entries and Erin s narrative text, the book records their eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. In early 2007, Teach With Your Heart, Erin s powerful memoir and call to arms, was published. While Erin has been credited with giving her students a second chance, it was perhaps she who changed the most during her tenure at Wilson High School. She decided to channel her classroom experiences toward a broader cause, and today her impact as a teacher extends well beyond Room 203. Erin founded the Freedom Writers Foundation, where she currently works with teachers around the country to implement her innovative lesson plans into their own classrooms. Recently, Erin s teaching methods from her time in Room 203 have been published in the Freedom Writers Diary Teacher s Guide. Proceeds from the sale of all books directly fund the Freedom Writers Foundation. Erin and her students have appeared on numerous television shows, including Oprah, Prime Time Live with Connie Chung, Barbara Walters The View, and Good Morning America, to name a few. Erin and the Freedom Writers have earned dozens of awards including the prestigious Spirit of Anne Frank Award. Erin is a graduate of the University of California Irvine, where she received the Lauds and Laurels Distinguished Alumni Award. She earned her Master s Degree and teaching credentials from California State University Long Beach, where she was honored as Distinguished Alumna by the School of Education.

4 Ger Duany, A survivor of the tragic exodus of an estimated 20,000 Sudanese children, Ger Duany, one of the legendary Lost Boys of Sudan, is the epitome of resilience. Ger s childhood was marked by adversity on a scale that is difficult to imagine, but he has succeeded in healing some of the pain. With close family members currently displaced inside South Sudan, and in refugee camps in the neighboring countries, Ger has dedicated his time to ongoing highprofile humanitarian efforts. He has committed himself to becoming one of the voices for the people of South Sudan, even as refugee issues have taken center stage globally in the wake of unprecedented population flow, from the Middle East to Europe. Ger spends his time educating people all around the world on the refugee crises. He also visits refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, interacting with fellow South Sudanese and refugees of mixed nationalities, exchanging experiences and ideals. Ger is a true communicator with an eloquent voice, which allows his audience to feel the passion he shares for the people of South Sudan. He brings intrinsic authenticity to any discourse on the condition and experience of refugees. Ger s rise from a herds boy in the grasslands of South Sudan, to his experiences in Sudan s brutal Civil War, to the sheer effort that earned him a college education, and enabled him to become an actor, fashion model and a writer, is the story he tells with his heart and soul, irrespective of the audience before him.

5 Zlata Filipoviċ Zlata Filipoviċ is a Bosnian writer and the author of Zlata s Diary: A Child s Life in Wartime Sarajevo. From 1991 to 1993, she wrote in her diary about the horrors she witnessed during the war in Sarajevo. Zlata Filipoviċ embodies tolerance, acceptance and respect. She became a spokesperson for injustice in her country, speaking out on intolerance and hate. Zlata s message has reached millions, having been broadcast on the radio, television and newspapers around the world.

6 Sotheary Meas Sotheary Meas was born in the city of Battamban, Cambodia in 1968 to educated parents. She was the fourth child of six. Her father was a civil engineer who designed and built many of the roads in Cambodia and her mother was a baker of sweets. She lived a charmed life, devoting her formative years to education, play and Buddhist studies. With the withdrawal of American armed forces from Vietnam and the concurrent rise of the despot Salorth Sar (self proclaimed Pol Pot ) in 1975, the Khmer rouge government separated her from her family violently, as they had done with tens of thousands of other children. Placed in camps, she and tens of thousands of children were forced by the Cambodian government to work the rice fields for trade with China in exchange for weapons. Like two million other Cambodian people, her parents and youngest brother did not survive the atrocities and died of starvation in the late 1970s s. After four years of forced labor in the rice fields, and with the fall of Pol Pot and the end of his genocidal and maniacal policies, Ms. Meas entered a United Nations sponsored refugee camp. From the age of eleven to sixteen, Ms. Meas used every opportunity to learn from the courses the UN had established in those refugee camps. In December 1984 at the age of 16, Ms. Meas obtained refugee status in the United States and arrived in Utica without shoes or a coat and without any family. Continuing to draw on the strength of her parents memory, she commenced her formal education immediately on her arrival in America. In 1989, Ms. Meas graduated from the former Utica Free Academy and in the fall matriculated at MVCC, obtaining an Associates Degree. Ms. Meas obtained United States citizenship in Ms. Meas then continued at Utica College of Syracuse University. She continues to reside in Utica, New York, and calls it home.

7 Tresor Rusesabagina Tresor Rusesabagina is a strong advocate for the promotion of peace and reconciliation in Africa. Tresor was born in Rwanda, and his family played a pivotal role in helping innocent men and women survive the genocide taking place in When the ethnic cleansing of Tutsis began in April 1994, his father, Paul Rusesabagina (pictured above R), a hotel manager at the luxurious Hotel Milles Collines, was able to save more than 1200 Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees against their would be killers by granting them shelter in the besieged capital. Their courageous story found its way to the big screen in the form of the critically acclaimed film Hotel Rwanda. Tresor is currently a college student at Chapman University. He works at the Freedom Writers Foundation, where he speaks to middle schools, high schools and colleges about his emotional experience.

8 Bunni Sek From , upwards of 3 million Cambodians were killed during the genocide commenced by the Khmer Rouge Communist party in Cambodia. Bunni Sek was born in a Cambodian refugee camp, named Sa Keao, in Two years later the Sek family was sponsored by the United States and were transferred to Long Beach, California. Bunni and her family left behind a terrifying part of their history but were now faced with a new set of adversities. The city and her neighborhood were downtrodden with poverty, gangs, and violence. Bunni was only 7 years old when she experienced her first attack walking home from school. It wasn t until Bunni was introduced to a new school and Ms. G s class that her life became more promising. Her chances of becoming another statistic were suddenly reduced. She became friends with peers who shared a similar background of turmoil and had a teacher who wanted to understand it all. Bunni had become a part of the Freedom Writer family.

9 Autograph/Note Page