Suggestion for student project re: Darfur.

[woodsprite]

I have a niece who has been appointed to come up with an idea for her high school to drill into the other students the tragedy of what is happening in Darfur. It's a high school chapter of Amnesty International. I told her mom that I'd ask on this list because I was sure someone would have some good suggestions.

I was trying to think of how they drew attention about how many of our soldiers were killed - but the difference between 3000+ and 400K+ - it seems like some of those ideas don't port well. Last year at her school they set up chairs in the quad, each chair representing XXXX killed. The general school population didn't even notice the chairs!

Anybody have any ideas?

[havocmom]

1. hmmm, I will try to contact someone who may help if he has time...

he walked out of that hell as a youngster. He was one of the lucky ones.

[woodsprite]

2. I just sent her some figures. Don't know if they'll be helpful or not.

400K - That's over 133 World Trade Center tragedies.
That's half the population of the state of Delaware.
That was approx. the population of New Orleans when Katrina hit.
That is the population of the entire duchy of Luxembourg.
That's almost 6x the number of seats in Lincoln Financial Field.
That's 5x the total population of Camden, NJ.

[haele]

3. A local Episcopalian church hosts Sudanese refugees -

That church is apparently doing a lot of work with the refugees from Darfur. Where are you located? There are areas around the country where many refugees from the Darfur region and environs are congregated; in those cases, a community center for the refugees might be of some assistance.

As for websites - the best I found for the kidlet who was comparing Darfur to the Holocaust as part of an english project is from Human Rights Watch:

http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=africa&c=darfur

Good luck - it's a grim subject.\

Haele

[woodsprite]

4. They're in NJ, really close to the Philly area. n/t

[havocmom]

5. Location and any local Sudanese refugee groups would be a good start

Nothing makes the point as well as hearing an actual survivor tell the tale.

'Is it as bad as seeing your best friend eaten by a lion?' was the question a young man posed to a co-worker who was ranting about some condition she found intolerable at the office. The young man's perspective sure gave all within earshot pause to stop and REALLY think about what was bad and what was just annoying.

Nothing makes the point as well as hearing an actual survivor tell the tale. And there are ways to contact survivors of this holocaust. Find one who is comfortable speaking to groups, and awareness WILL BE RAISED...

Paging Mr. Majok ;) I believe the original poster of this thread is in an area close to you...

[havocmom]

6. You have a PM

:hi:

[applegrove]

7. Get grains of rice. Look up the number of people killed and count all

the grains of rice in a measuring cup. Then Cup out the number killed, the number raped, the number ethnically cleansed where each grain of rice represents a person. You may have to go to costco to get the rice.

[havocmom]

8. Easier with something already counted

I demonstrated a really large number to some youngsters by using safety pins. They come in boxes with a specific count, easier than counting out grains of rice ;) I borrowed the boxes I needed to arrive at the correct number from my dry cleaner. Poured them s-l-o-w-l-y into a clear punchbowl, one box after another until the number of pins equaled the number of people I was trying to impress on the kids. Told the kids one pin counted as one child in the particular situation we were discussing in that exercise. They were impressed.

Put the pins back into the boxes and took them back to my dry cleaner the next day, with many thanks for helping me make a point with very young children. The dry cleaner was not too concerned that there were exactly a gross of pins in each box ;), just that they got them back promptly to use.