We hope this finds you well. Here are a few quick updates on the Genocide Memorial Day Project.
Poetry Competition for 2020
The Genocide Memorial Day (GMD) poetry competition was established in 2012 to raise awareness around issues like racism, otherisation, discrimination and dehumanisation. Our aim is to inspire students to express themselves through writing poetry and help teachers in subjects across the curriculum encourage students to learn about and discuss genocide and more particularly how genocides come about and how they may be prevented.
The GMD competition challenges your students to write a poem and reflect the theme of ‘protecting humanity from genocide’. Full details of the competition can be found here.
The deadline for submissions this year is 1st December 2019. Winners will be announced around or at the Genocide Memorial Day event on Sunday 19th January 2020.
The competition generally cuts across various curriculum strands including history, English literature, politics, religious education, citizenship and media studies.
Colonialism & Genocide
This year Rwanda commemorated the 25th anniversary of the genocide where nearly 1 million people were killed from April to July 1994. In this lesson, we introduce students to learn about the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, how ‘difference’ and otherisation was managed and institutionalised under colonialism through a strategy of “divide and rule”, how cycles of violence are reproduced and how they might be broken to avoid future genocides.
Lesson 4- Colonialism and Genocide. This lesson plan can stand alone or be used in conjunction with others in the Introduction to Genocide series of Lesson Plans. These plans target ages 14+ and 16+, and each last 1 hour but can be adapted to fit shorter lessons.
These and all our lesson plans are available under the Genocide Memorial Day author account on the TES resources siteas well as on our website. Please do send us your feedback on the lesson and suggestions for how to adapt them, or requests for further lesson plans on similar topics on gmd@ihrc.org.
In addition, in our School Resources section, we have links to relevant documentaries, films, essays, poems, posters and books. We also have a discount of 15% available for small orders of those items stocked by the IHRC Bookshop. Please use the code BOOKS4SCHOOL at the checkout. If you want to make a larger order and get a larger discount, please contact the IHRC Bookshop directly on shop@ihrc.org
Looking forward to continuing this project with your support and feedback. Please don’t hesitate to contact us.
With prayers and peace,
Genocide Memorial Day Team
gmd@ihrc.org
www.genocidememorialday.org.uk
