April 14, 2005

The Genocide Education Project Established

San Francisco, CA – The Genocide Education Project proudly announces its formal establishment as a non-profit educational organization and the recent hiring of Sara Cohan as its Education Director.

The mission of The Genocide Education Project is to assist educators in teaching about human rights and genocide, particularly the Armenian Genocide, by developing and distributing instructional materials, providing access to teaching resources and organizing educational workshops.

"We're excited that The Genocide Education Project has become a full-fledged non-profit organization, and that Sara Cohan, an exceedingly qualified and enthusiastic educator has come on board," said Raffi Momjian, Executive Director. "We're eager to put into motion many of the ideas we've been developing to encourage educators to teach the lessons of genocide to their students."

In addition to reaching out to public school districts about the importance of genocide and human rights education, organizing workshops for teachers, distributing resources and lesson plans to be used in the classroom, The Genocide Education Project maintains a website at www.TeachGenocide.org.  This cyber resource library was published specifically for teachers, providing resources for classroom use about the Armenian Genocide and other gross human rights violations.

The Genocide Education Project has published a comprehensive binder for educators that includes step-by-step lessons to use in the classroom as well as information about other curriculum, videos, books, and discussion topics.  The binder, "Human Rights and Genocide:  A Case Study of the First Genocide of the 20th Century" is sponsored by the San Francisco Unified School District and was developed in close cooperation with San Francisco high school history teachers.

Sara Cohan, the organization's new Education Director, was a classroom teacher in Florida for five years. She has a Master's Degree in Social Science Education, received a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship, and served as the Research Fellow at Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Cohan also served on state and national education committees and was a research associate at the Armenian National Institute. After serving briefly as a volunteer for The Genocide Education Project, she welcomed the opportunity to serve the organization in a more comprehensive manner.

"I am looking forward to serving an organization with the mission of The Genocide Education Project," said Cohan. "Incorporating human rights and genocide education in the classroom is an important step in training young people to be proactive when genocidal events occur in the future."

The Genocide Education Project began seven years ago as the Genocide Curriculum Project, one of the many public education initiatives of the Bay Area Armenian National Committee.  When members recognized that the Armenian Genocide was generally not being taught in public schools, despite a 15-year old California law mandating instruction of the Armenian Genocide, an effort was conceived to reach out to school districts, reminding them of the need for instruction on this crucial part of modern history.  With the publication of the "Human Rights and Genocide" lesson plans and TeachGenocide.org website, volunteers began the process of establishing a new organization whose mission is to help institutionalize public education about the Armenian Genocide and the problem of genocide and human rights violations. Volunteers from Southern California, New York, Washington DC and Chicago joined the effort to reach school districts all over the country, and the process of establishing a new organization and receiving non-profit status began in 2004. Tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) status is now pending and expected to be complete within the coming year.  For more information about the efforts of The Genocide Education Project please visit their website at www.GenocideEducation.org.


The Genocide Education Project is a nonprofit organization that assists educators in teaching about human rights and genocide, particularly the Armenian Genocide, by developing and distributing instructional materials, providing access to teaching resources and organizing educational workshops.