Darfur Editorial Challenge

The U.S. Holocaust Museum is sponsoring a Darfur Editorial-Writing Contest. According to the website:

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience is asking high school and university students to write an editorial explaining to their communities why the genocide in Sudan’s western region of Darfur matters today. Students can enter their published editorials in the Committee on Conscience’s editorial contest.

The submission deadline is March 10, 2006. The USHMM website for the contest has links students can use to learn more about the crisis in Darfur (pronounced DAR-FOUR incidentally) and research both related history and current events so they can write well-informed essays.

The ongoing genocide in Darfur is not an abstraction, it is a reality. If you teach high school or university students, have them write an essay this term on a subject that really matters. Winning writers “will be flown into Washington, D.C., to join us [USHMM officials] for the annual Holocaust Days of Remembrance at the Capitol Rotunda.”

I challenge students and educators to take this editorial contest several steps further:

1. In addition to preparing a written essay, create a digital story using PhotoStory3 or iMovie based on your written editorial.
2. Share your digital editorial as a podcast and/or enhanced/video podcast online. (Use CC Publisher to post it free to the Internet Archive.)
3. Enter your digital editorial about Darfur in a local digital storytelling contest.
4. Send a DVD or VHS copy of your digital editorial to your elected national representatives and officials.
5. As for permission to share your digital story at a local church or civic group meeting, to further educate others about the genocide in Darfur and challenge others to take action.

If you accept this challenge, and you or your students create a digital editorial about Darfur, please let me know and I’ll link your online creation here for others to view and share.

Genocide in a far away land may seem like something we can’t do anything about, but that is not true. We can and must take action.

Technorati Tags: darfur

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