Sharon High Students Promote Genocide Awareness

Media coverage Monday of a trial in New Hampshire may have resonated with students.

About 40 to 45 students in social studies teacher Jennifer Koltov's two Genocide and Human Nature - the Horror and the Hope" classes held their first Genocide and Human Rights action week, featuring student-led discussions, displays and fundraisers, during the week of Jan. 16.

The awareness activities were the culmination and a follow-up to a held for Koltov's Genocide and Human Nature - the Horror and the Hope" classes for seniors during the fall, she says.

Monday, the Associated Press reported on the trial of Manchester, N.H. resident Beatrice Munyenyezi, "who prosecutors say commanded killings and rapes during the 1994 Rwanda genocide and then denied it on applications to enter the United States and obtain U.S. citizenship," the news agency said.

At Sharon High, Koltov says she got the idea for an action week during a summer program. A teacher in Connecticut mentioned doing a similar activity.

Sharon students wrote a research paper on a topic of their choice but related to genocide, Koltov says. They also chose a case study within that topic.

Students then could do another project promoting awareness of genocide.

Koltov says one bake sale provided information and raised funds for My Sister's Keeper, a grassroots effort that recently built a girls school in southern Sudan. Sarah Rial of My Sister's Keeper was part of Koltov's speaker series, which was sponsored by the Sharon Education Foundation.

Some students made pamphlets and displays for the high school's cafeteria annex

The materials provided basic facts about the particular genocide, and options for helping address it, such as donating to UNICEF.

"The conflicts within the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been described as Africa's first war, involving disputation among seven different nations," according to one student pamphlet.

"These feuds have been triggered by many complex reasons, including: conflicts over basic resources such as water, access and control over rich minerals and other resources as well as various political agendas. Many national, international corporations, and other authorities have had great interest in the outcomes of these disagreements.

"The DRC is abundant in conflict minerals, which armed groups are after. Unfortunately for the people of DRC, its resource of wealth has rarely been in their favor. Instead, the natural resources have attracted greedy troops, devious corporations, and corrupt governments and divided the population between competing ethnic groups.

"Fighting and sexual violence continued in the Congo for years, killing over 5.4 million people, (and) some hostilities (are) still going on. Today, countless non-profit organizations and other sponsor groups are trying to help out those in the Congo."