Agency Details:

Voices Education Project

Voices: Education Project introduces into classrooms voices that reflect upon profound experiences during times of conflict and war, and engages students in creative processes that lead to constructive dialogue, critical thinking and compassionate action.

Description:
Acknowledging that conflict is inevitable, we envision a world in which nations, communities, and individuals move beyond polarization and destruction, instead viewing conflict as an opportunity to create understanding, empathy and positive change.

Through education, the arts, and self-expression, The Voices in Wartime Education Project aims to transform how we respond to, engage in, and recover from conflict. By working directly with instructors and students we strive to model pedagogical methods and social processes that challenge and enrich the arts, humanities and social science curricula.

Our on-going work includes:

1. Helping students grapple with understanding violence, conflict and war through their own exploration.
2. Assisting students in expressing their feelings, thoughts, questions and opinions about conflict through the arts and humanities.
3. Providing an extensive online curriculum that helps students and teachers understand the basis and reality of war, and the trauma caused by war at a deep level, both intellectually and emotionally.
4. Working directly with individual schools to bring veterans, poets, writers, speakers and artists into the classroom.
5. Maintaining a self-publishing web resource with tools for students and teachers to contribute online poems, anthologies and artwork.
6. Providing experiential institutes and workshops in collaboration with university-based programs and professional educational organizations in order to train educators to use the Education Project in their classrooms, using an “all voices” perspective.
7. Forming collaborative partnerships with other organizations to keep alive a respectful and compassionate dialogue about issues of peace and justice.
   
   



History:
Voices started out with the release of a documentary film entitled Voices in Wartime five years ago. Over the years we have released a series of curriculum books using poetry and writings of war, created several websites and provided many in school programs and training workshops for educators at the secondary and college level.

Voices: The Education Project is grounded in the Humanities, including expressive writing and other creative arts disciplines, and uses stories and poems from veterans and civilian witnesses to war, as well as the work of well known and “lesser” known poets to help young people understand the traumatic effects of war, gain global understandings that will help create a less violent world, and find their own voices by:

 Learning that everyone's perspective is shaped by multiple influences and that others have different perspectives.

 Learning about the ambiguities and vulnerabilities facing many of the worlds’ citizens, and how to intelligently interpret information about world conditions.

 Developing cross-cultural awareness and understanding.

 Learning about and understanding the interdependency of communities, cultures, and nations.

 Developing awareness of the difficult value decisions we make about the solutions to our world problems.

In addition, Voices: The Education Project works extensively with curriculum. We see curricula as everything that happens inside a classroom—not just a set of modules and materials. A vibrant learning experience must be owned and controlled by the students. Young people want to use their voices to express their own deepest desires, highest aspirations and flights of imagination. They want to express their own fear and sadness as well as experience the joy of exploration and learning. The result of a great educational experience is that students have found their own voices and learned to recognize and listen to the voices of others. In the 21st century, students do all of this both online and offline, in person and via email, web sites, cell phones, blogs, and text messages, with the aid of photo, video, and audio art and interaction.



Contact people:


Marilyn Turkovich, Executive Director, (phone), (email) Andrew Himes, Project Director, (phone), (email)


Main office number: 206/632-7587
Office fax number: 206/632-7587

Address:


Central Area Senior Center 500 30th Ave. S. Seattle, WA 98144 (See a map)


Web Site: http://www.voiceseducation.org

Directions:

From Seattle's International District, go east on Jackson to 30th Ave. Turn right on 30th Ave and go one block to the Center. Sign in at the front desk. The Voices office is in the basement.

Miscellaneous Information

Liability
	No
Does your organization welcome court-ordered community service volunteers?
	Yes
Does your organization have volunteer positions for youth 12-18?
	No

Last updated on March 17, 2009