Spring 2011 Grant Recipients Announced

We are pleased to announce support for The Levine Museum of the New South (USA) and Nonviolence International Southeast Asia (Thailand) for the Fund’s second round of FY2011 funding.

Levine Museum
School closings and re-segregations, increasing poverty levels, and the growing isolation of African-American and Latino students from whites in the Charlotte, North Carolina region prompted the Levine Museum to develop a new project that would prompt intergroup trust and equal educational opportunity.

“Courage in the City: Educational Equity in the Multicultural South” will create a dialogue model to spark discussion across racial and ethnic boundaries on issues of social justice and public education. The dialogue sessions, targeted to representatives of African-American and Latino community groups, will complement two key exhibitions hosted by the Levine Museum: COURAGE: The Carolina Story that Changed America (based on the first lawsuit in America challenging racial segregation in public schools) and PARA TODOS LOS NIÑOS: Fighting Segregation before Brown (about the 1946 Mendez case, which ended school segregation for Mexicans and Mexican Americans in California).

The exhibitions will provide the catalyst to engage participants in personal reflection and facilitated group discussion on today’s pressing civic issues and on personal stories of courage in the midst of community change and conflict. With this project, the Levine Museum will model ways to discuss difficult issues across difference with respect and civility.

Nonviolence International Southeast Asia
At the Krue Se Mosque in the Southern Thai on April 28, 2004, 32 persons were killed as a result of a government action against suspected Muslim insurgents. This incident, now know as the Krue Se Massacre, is one of the bloodiest in Southern Thailand’s history.

Marking the seventh anniversary of the massacre, Nonviolence International Southeast Asia will develop a peace education program to help understand this and other tragic histories. The multifaceted program will bring together local educators to discuss varied perspectives and personal narratives of the 2004 event. The discussion will be followed by a workshop in which educators will develop teaching modules on tragic events for children 7-12 years old that embrace diversity, dialogue and tolerance. These modules will be tested at the Krue Se Mosque, a proposed Site of Conscience.

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