Courage to Care says “Stand up to Discrimination”
The Sydney-based Courage to Care organisation is mounting an exhibition aimed at eliminating racism and bullying.More than forty schools from disadvantaged areas are expected to visit the exhibition which opens next week at Sydney’s B’nai B’rith Centre.
Courage to Care, an organisation founded in 1999 to combat racism, has partnered the exhibition with the Australian Business Community Network, a group of highly committed national business leaders and companies which delivers mentoring and coaching programs to schools in areas of high need.
The ABCN has invited 40 of the most disadvantaged schools in the Sydney Metropolitan area to attend the Courage to Care exhibition. The organisation has been working with schools which have a high drop-out rate, a scarcity of good role models and students who face potential unemployment and the risk of involvement in criminal activities.
Andrew Havas
The exhibition will also present an opportunity for some of Courage to Care’s 320 volunteers to participate in the program and for many contributing members of B’nai B’rith which funds Courage to Care to see the organisation at work.
The exhibition will open on May-31 and run throughout June. At the official opening, more than sixty invited schoolchildren will join members of the community in watching an eight minute DVD on anti-bullying techniques and inspect an exhibition of precious objects signifying positive stories of how their owners combated adversity…including a jacket from Auschwitz.
Panels will tell the stories of how those non-Jews who rescued Jews from the horror of the Holocaust received their Righteous Among the Nations Awards.
The support given during the war will dealt with at a workshop as to how it could be effective in today’s world.
C2C Chairman Andrew Havas told J-Wire: “Courage to Care has mounted over 30 exhibitions in the last 10 years and we estimate around 145,000 including 63,000 schoolchildren have visited them. The ultimate aim is to reduce racism of any kind and to counter bullying…a growing problem in today’s schools. We highlight the problem with a special exhibit featuring two fighting seagulls, one white and the other black. We use this to create a discussion in which we highlight who is the victim.”
The official opening on Monday will be addressed by Father Chris Riley who heads the “Youth Off the Streets” organisation.
C2C has recently secured the unique opportunity to take Courage to Care to the Australian Museum of Democracy at the Old Parliament House in Canberra in 2012.
