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Calibasas
High Armenian Students Raise Awareness and Funds for Genocide
by Sophia Armen
It all started with the idea of the “teacher-sponsor” of the Armenian Club at Calbasas High School, my French teacher. As a free spirited and mischievous Armenian-French activist, she began selling t-shirts in her classrooms with the slogan “Stop Genocide In Sudan” designed by a student at CHS. The proceeds went to “Doctors Without Borders”, a group of French doctors who take in wounded refugees. This was a great success!
Weeks later a student named Samantha Finkelstein contacted Mrs. Boghosian with the idea of having a Darfur assembly by the Jewish World Watch, and the idea of raising money to send to the refugee camps. Mrs. Boghosian was thrilled and wanted the Armenian Club to join in (partly because of our previous success with our Armenian Genocide remembrance presentation in April and our sensitivity to the issue). The date was set and the presentation was ready to go.
The whole school attended, a total of over 2,000 students, while Janice the president of Jewish World Watch and a refugee spoke. Samantha and the Armenian Club president, Lena Ghazarian worked so hard and it greatly paid off in the end. It was amazing, as I sat at the front looking at the crowd, to see how many high schoolers were attentively taking in the information and I feel many left thinking about how they could help.
We sold the green support bracelets after the assembly and handed out Postcards, given to us by the Jewish World Watch, addressed to President George Bush about the need of action in Darfur. Shortly after, my dance teacher Mrs. Kipnis contacted me with the idea of having the proceeds of the upcoming Dance 2 Concert go to genocide relief in Darfur. I was thrilled and immediately told Mrs. Boghosian.
The night of the concert Mrs. Boghosian and I collected over $500 at the door. Later that month we were invited to present the check of the money we had raised at the Jewish World Watch Panel Discussion and Press Conference. The morning of the event we had about $ 1800 and were a little disappointed at not reaching our $2000 goal. So with the help of Mrs.Boghosian’s period 1 class we raised over $200 that morning alone from going from classroom to classroom! At the event, Samantha, and I presented the check to Janice and really enjoyed being there.
It has been great and I think we have all learned how every little bit of effort counts. “Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it” and it’s sad to see how many times we have in the last century (beginning with the Armenian Genocide). We are trying not to keep up with that horrible tradition.