Students Look Beyond Scarsdale at Global Citizenship Day

SHS students were treated to an eye-opening day of presentations from visitors, teachers and peers at Fourth Annual Global Citizenship Day on September 28. It seemed as if the entire school was involved in over 40 sessions held throughout the day that addressed far-reaching issues such as global resources, refugees, ethics, education, criminal justice and the upcoming election.

Sessions were lead by special guests, returning alumni, the SHS faculty and students and offered food for thought and inspiration.

I was fortunate to attend three sessions – all of which were moving and resonated with me in the following days.

Kara Hunersen, a 2010 graduate of SHS shared her experiences during her five months as a volunteer in Morocco with the Amal Association for Culinary Art in Marrakesh that runs the Amal Restaurant and Women's Training Center. There, the association helps disenfranchised young woman, some who were victims of rape or slavery, to learn skills to assist them on the road to economic independence. The group now runs one of Marrakech's leading restaurants and offers cooking classes for tourists – all of which support the organization. The women learn cooking, reading, business and life skills to help them launch their own businesses or work for another enterprise and become self-supporting.

It was an eye opening experience for Kara who translated, helped to teach the cooking classes and learned how to live in and navigate Marrakech. She came to appreciate the generosity of the Moroccan people and to appreciate the virtues of patience, respect, trust and perseverance. As she was only a few years older than many of the students in the audience at SHS, she surely motivated some to follow their own dreams and see how they could make a difference in a troubled world.

Next I heard the heart warming story of a group of firefighters from Elizabeth New Jersey who were moved by their experiences as first responders at the World Trade Center on 9/11 to pay it forward to victims of other national tragedies. Founder of the Where Angels Play Foundation, Bill Lavin explained that the group's first work was to help families in Bay St. Louis Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina by building the state's first handicapped-accessible playground after the hurricane.

Seven years later when 20 children and 6 educators were killed in the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT the group went to work on a much larger scale. They founded the Sandy Ground Project with the mission of building 26 playgrounds, one for each of the victims to be built in communities destroyed by the hurricane.

In just 18 months they raised $3 million and constructed 26 playgrounds in three states, each reflecting the personality of the teacher or child who died in the school shooting.

Speaking about the playground dedicated to her daughter Catherine Hubbard who died at the school, Jenny Hubbard said, "This is where we can learn to be happy again."

Last I was privileged to see World War II veteran Alan Moskin, who now at age 90 is more than four times the age of many of the students who packed the auditorium to listen to Moskin's eye witness account of the liberation of a concentration camp in Austria in 1945. He described the stench, the starvation and the shock of coming upon a barbed wire compound in the forest filled with "human skeletons and emaciated zombies in filthy striped pajamas, "who were chanting prayers." He handed them cigarettes and they tried to eat the tobacco and choked. He cried when he realized that like him, they were Jews. Moskin told the room that his outfit of soldiers had no idea that camps like this existed and were overwhelmed by the horrific scene they encountered.

According to Moskin, this camp was one of 30,000 death and labor camps spread throughout Europe. The experience has a left a permanent mark on him and he continues to speak out in order to "bear witness for the poor souls that were murdered." To the deniers he says, "There was a holocaust. This is not a myth. Those who choose to forget are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past."

The ambitious day of events was organized by Social Studies teachers Heather Waters, Carlos Bedoya and Fallon Plunkett. Commenting on the day, Waters said, "As organizers we are most proud of how much it grows each year. The kids were most moved by the survivors and the WW2 vet and we, as history teachers, felt lucky to be able to bring history alive for them. We were able to record the presentations as several speakers are nearing 90. Students were also moved by the many individuals who have been moved to act and make their communities better like Where Angels Play. They also felt fulfilled being able to do something themselves through making the lunches for the Hope Soup Kitchen."