PRESS RELEASE
The Genocide Education Project
“Learning the Past, Building the Future”
51 Commonwealth Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 264-4203
[email protected]
Contact: Raffi Momjian (415) 264-4203
THE GENOCIDE EDUCATION PROJECT ESTABLISHED
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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
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
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.