The Righteous Conversations Project screened its 2012 public service announcements and donated the PSAs to non-profit organizations Nov. 15 during an event held in Ahmanson Lecture Hall.
The Righteous Conversations Project, an organization part of Remember Us, is a project that brings together Holocaust survivors and teens to speak up about injustice in the world through new media workshops and community engagements.
The project was first launched at Harvard-Westlake in February 2011 as an evening conversation between Holocaust survivors and teens. The program’s PSA workshop was piloted in 2011, directed by Visual Arts Department Head Cheri Gaulke.
During the event, the 2011 PSAs titled “Learn the Difference” and “Love our Families” were screened, along with five new PSAs that were given to non-profits that will be using them in their work. This year’s PSAs were titled “It’s Not Just One,” “All Animals Matter,” “Seek the Truth,” “Words Can Hurt” and “History Lesson.”
“It was also a ceremony to acknowledge all the students, survivors, teachers and administrators who came together, in force, to make this workshop happen, to make these PSAs and to speak up, in community, about injustice,” Remember Us executive director Samara Hutman (Rebecca ’12) said.
The event also included featured speaker Robert Beiser, who works as a part of Seattle Against Slavery and Freedom Shabbat.
Beiser was introduced by Remember Us Board President CeCe Feiler (Jackie ’10, Jamie ’12, Jake ’13).
Students from schools in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Philadelphia participated on the 2012 PSAs.
“The Righteous Conversation Project began with three goals: to facilitate conversations that would inspire young people to become the stewards of the survivors’ stories, to reassure the survivor community that the lessons and stories they want to transmit are received with care and heart-felt commitment [and] last, to inspire young people through these inter-generational collaborations, in the face of cruelty and injustice, in their own time, never be silent and to use the tools available to them to speak up and to speak out,” Hutman said.
Another goal of the program is to support one another in community to achieve their goals, she said.
In creating their PSAs, they work within the community to dialogue and create them, but then reach out to give the PSAs to non-profits actively working on the issues addressed.
The workshop will be offered again this summer though the Harvard-Westlake Summer Program.
