Mutual Support, Grassroots Collaboration, and Building Community

Taiji comes from Clovelly, a beautiful seaside town with dramatic mountain views in the south western side of Cape Town, South Africa. At the beginning of April, he and a few of neighbours decided to start a Community Action Network (CAN). ‘My aim is to connect people. All people have value. We all have something to offer to our communities. Sadly, oftentimes we become so lonely and caught up in our personal lives. We think, “I don't have time to be involved in the community.” But I think that community is about mutual support.

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Social Justice Art: Learning from Youth Artists at the Southern US Border

This spring, Teaching Tolerance – a program of the Southern Poverty Law Center – provided a platform for educators and young creatives to make art and build campaigns in their schools and communities through the #USvsHate project. We were thrilled to see the several winners announced last week and to feature some of their work on our blog. We got a chance to catch up with Monix Williams-Garcia, an 8th grader at Bell Middle School in San Diego Unified School District to learn about the project.

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#USvsHate: Build Community, Challenge Injustice, Create a Movement

Last year, Mica Pollock and her team at the Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence (CREATE) teamed up with Teaching Tolerance (TT) to turn #USvsHate into a nationwide anti-bias initiative. TT School-Based Programming and Grants Manager Jey Ehrenhalt spoke with Pollock about the program’s beginnings and what she hopes participating students will gain from the experience.

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South Sudanese Youth Championing Creative Campaigns In Response To COVID-19

South Sudanese young people have initiated creative projects which are aimed at creating awareness to the general public on preventive and life saving measures against the virus. Most of these projects are meant to sensitize the local population through creative content in various local languages spoken in South Sudan presented through both audio and video means. So far over ten songs has been recorded, produced, and disseminated in South Sudan to create awareness about the virus.

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