A project begun by Landmark Education graduate Carolyn Elaine in the Self-Expression and Leadership Program to reduce violence in Chicago's schools was recognized by National Public Radio (NPR) in a story about Fenger High School.

Last fall Fenger student Derrion Albert was beaten to death in a nationally publicized case which became a symbol of the violence in Chicago's schools – last year a total of 49 students were murdered in Chicago, and this year is ahead of that pace. Fenger and its new principal, Elizabeth Dozier, are taking action to turn the school around.

As her project in Landmark's SELP, Elaine, who herself is a Fenger graduate, formed the organization Restoring the P.I.E.C.E.S., whose purpose is to connect schools impacted by violence to their communities through student art projects.

The specific project mentioned by National Public Radio was the creation of a 700-square foot peace mural. Elaine worked for weeks with students to create the mural, according to the story. The mural, titled Choose Your Own Legacy, was recently unveiled to cheering students, faculty and alumni.

"We can't keep looking for something on the outside and change what's happening with our children," said Elaine. We have to be that change."

The mural portrays Fenger's history, including current and former students, teachers, students such as Albert who have died, and past student groups.

For more information, also go to the Restoring the P.I.E.C.E.S website.

Out of taking the Landmark Forum, science teacher Otto Fong realized his dreams of becoming an animator, combining his passion for science with his passion for animation to provide kids with an entertaining and easy way to learn scientific principles.

Fong previously released his animated 'Adventures in Science Book in 2008 – now Fong has brought his second 'Adventures in Science Book' to SmartKids '10, Malaysia's largest children's education fair, which took place this past April 9-11. Fong was also a featured speaker in May at the Asian Children's Writers and Illustrators Conference. The book is both an animated comic adventure and an educational teaching tool about science.

Fong, who began his career as an engineer and then a science teacher, had long had both a love of science and animation.

Here Fong discusses the physical creation of the second Adventures in Science Book:

Here Fong gives some of his personal background and tells why he wanted to create a comic book about science:

Adventures in Science has now been listed as a Children's bestseller. For more information on Fong – he is planning a third Adventures in Science Book – or to see more of Fong's artwork and to find out where the books can be ordered, visit the Sir Fong blog.

The Haitian Network Group of Detroit (HNGD) is holding a fundraiser on Saturday, April 24, to rebuild the Holy Trinity Music School of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that was destroyed in the January earthquake.

Landmark Education graduate Linda Munch has become involved in the fundraiser out of a chance encounter with an event organizer and her project in Landmark's Team Management and Leadership Program, taking on running the music program at the event, fundraising and singing in the 'Night of Classical Music' that will raise money for the school.

The music school, founded in 1963, was an internationally acclaimed school with 1,000 students. The benefit concert will feature performers who were teachers at St. Trinity, alongside local Detroit artists.

The event also features a silent auction, whose offerings include memorabilia from the Detroit Lions. Admission to the evening comes through two tiers of tickets: regular tickets for $40, and VIP tickets for $100 which include a gourmet dinner with a taste of Haitian cuisine as well as free valet parking.

The event is taking place at the Virgil H. Carr Cultural Arts Center, 311 East Grand River, in downtown detroit, from 7 to 9 pm on Saturday. Regular or VIP tickets can be purchased through the HNGD website, which gives further event details. See also this previous Landmark Education News story about great ways to contribute to Haiti.

A recent story in the Jerusalem Post highlighted the project created by Ido Yaari in Landmark's Self-Expression and Leadership Program. Titled 'Moments the Blind Can See', the project allowed the blind to take photographs and have their view of the world expressed through the photographs with the help of graphic designers. Here is an abbreviated version of the story.

A different way of seeing

A remarkable exhibit now showing in Tel Avivi showcases the work of blind photographers

by Carl Hoffman

An extraordinary exhibition of photographs is currently showing at the Windows Gallery at the Azrieli Center is Tel Aviv. Sponsored by Israel’s Center for the Blind, the exhibition features pictures shot by blind photographers and then enhanced by graphic designers according to mental pictures described by the blind photographers themselves.

Called “Moments the Blind Can See,” the exhibition was conceived and organized by Ido Yaari, 33, a volunteer at the Center for the Blind for the past three years.

“I got to know a little of the world of the blind from volunteering there,” he says. However, it was a course he took at Landmark Education, an organization devoted to self-improvement training, that ultimately lit a big enough fire under Yaari to get him to share his knowledge with the rest of the world.

“The course required each of us to undertake a project that is bigger than the things we usually do in our lives. The thought behind it was that we would think and behave the same way in our projects as we later would in real life. So the idea was to learn to overcome the obstacles stopping us in our projects so they won’t stop us later in real life. Since I’d been volunteering for the past three years in the Center for the Blind, it was obvious to me that my project should deal with the blind community.”

The first obstacle Yaari had to overcome was an evident lack of enthusiasm for the project at the Center for the Blind, an umbrella organization of various nonprofit organizations throughout Israel that assist the visually impaired.

“I sat down with a friend of mine, Gilad Ben Ari, a well known photographer, and he said, ‘Why not do an exhibition of blind people taking pictures?’ But when I went to the center and proposed the idea, they said, ‘Look, we already have a bunch of blind people doing photography.’” This initial rejection turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

“So I went back to the drawing board and came up with another level, which was the idea of adding graphic designs into the pictures. And this is the first time in the world that we have this exhibition in which blind people take pictures of things they have some kind of emotional connection to. They take the picture, and then afterwards they sit down with a graphic designer and tell him how it looks in their minds, how they imagine it. The purpose of the graphic designer is to take the blind person’s perception of the photograph and put it in the picture itself.”

The finished picture is thus a juxtaposition of two distinctly different ways of “seeing” – the way the camera sees, and the way a blind person envisions things in his or her mind. Says Yaari: “It’s kind of ironic in that a blind person gives us the reality in this photograph, using the camera, and then a person who can see – the graphic artist – gives us a glimpse into the blind person’s world.

As soon as Yaari began to talk about what he wanted to do, the response was overwhelming. “I got the graphics designers from Facebook. On a Wednesday, I put up a post that I was looking for volunteer graphics designers for this project. By Friday, I had 42 graphic designers signing on to help, and I only needed 21.”

Literally everything involved with the project was contributed pro bono and completely without charge, including the photo print canvases from Swift.co.il and, most importantly, the services of Studio Gavra, a well-known school of photography. Intrigued by the project, Studio Gavra provided each blind photographer with a camera and a sighted photographer to accompany him or her to the photo-shoot locale. Each sighted photographer offered his blind colleague some basic pointers in picture taking and, according to Yaari, “brainstormed with the blind person about what he or she wanted to photograph.” The blind photographers, along with their photos, would then sit with the graphic artists, all of whom donated their time and efforts as well.

The resulting pictures are fascinating, both as works of art and as rare glimpses into the cognitive world of the blind. Among the most striking is a panel of pictures of, well, sound.

Yaari stands by the pictures and explains, “Shimon Roitbord is 14 years old. He went to the market to photograph sounds. He wanted to show what they look like. So he went out with the sighted photographer. She put the camera around his neck. He held it down at his chest. And every time he heard a sound, he just turned toward it and took a picture.

Perhaps the most eye-catching work in the exhibition is a picture by Ethiopian immigrant Beza Nevava that shines with a riot of exuberant colors. “Beza lives in a world with no boundaries,” Yaari says. “He represented Israel in the Special Olympics in Beijing. He runs, He has climbed Mt. Everest. His favorite thing now is skydiving. And what he is showing here is a picture of a man running in Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv. The basic thing he wanted to express is the confidence he has while running. This is the confident, almost child-like confident world he lives in while he’s running.”

Another picture suggests that it perhaps takes a blind person to show us that memories are things that happen to the people we were, not the people we are now. Sisi Ben Simon took her camera to the home of her childhood and took all her photographs there at the camera level of a very little girl.

Some pictures, like that of Riki Pritash, could easily pass as the work of a professional sighted photographer. Pritash expertly depicts a young mother proudly hunkering down between her two toddler-aged children on tricycles. A graphic artist later added an effect to suggest the tricycles’ movement and speed.

“I have two purposes in this exhibition,” Yaari declares. “One is to show that regardless of the obstacles in life, we can do pretty much what we want to do. It’s up to us. Not just the blind, but everyone. This exhibition is an example. If a blind person can pick up a camera and take a picture of reality that he cannot see, then anyone can do anything.

“And the second objective is to make people aware of the blind people’s world, which we know nothing about. We see the blind as people who need help. And they’re not like that. This is something that some of them really want to emphasize – that they are people just like us. They’re denied many opportunities because we perceive them to be handicapped and incompetent.”

It is perhaps too early to tell whether or not the exhibition’s blind photographers will take more pictures and continue to surprise us with their unique ways of seeing the world around them. Ido Yaari, however, is already planning his next obstacle-busting project. This time, he says, it will be on behalf of a center for deaf and hearing-impaired children, where he also volunteers.

To read more information about the project, also visit the Midnight East online magazine.

הפורום של לנדמרק

When she needed to create a project in a Landmark Education program, Ruth Pillet created an activity that's unlikely to have been seen anywhere else – a team of seated, senior tap dancers, who perform numbers from such Broadway classics as "A Chorus Line" at a senior center in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia.

According Main Line Media News, Pillet, 71 years old herself, wanted to bring the joy of dance to seniors. A dance performer in her youth who returned to it 11 years ago, Pillet choreagraphed simple routines and put together various costumes, such as tophats and canes, or black and white outfits for the Chorus Line numbers, for the 13 performing seniors, the oldest of which is 91.

She arranged for tap shoes to be donated from the McHenry Dance Center after getting the go-ahead from the PALM center (Positive Aging in Lower Merion) to introduce the program. The senior group has had multiple public performances, incuding at PALM's annual luncheon and The Martin Luther King Association's program at Bryn Mawr College.

Those interested in getting involved or finding out more information can contact Pillet at 610-642-9370.

A leading New Zealand blog has inverviewed composer Andrew Correa, discussing his People in Harmony concerts which are taking place on March 21 as part of International Race Relations Day and which is Correa's project in Landmark Education's Self-Expression and Leadership Program.

Renee Liang, a writer for The Big Idea, a popular blog for artists and creative people, discussed the project with Correa, who said that People in Harmony was about brining people together and celebrating the rich multicultural heritage of Auckland, New Zealand.

Specifically, Correa is assembling groups of amateur performers from a wide range of cultures and musical styles to perform two concerts on the 21st. He has already put together a number of performers from Turkey, Sri Lanka and India. He says that as long as they can provide their own equipment and play, the event is open to performers from the entire community. In the interview, Correa talks about getting outside his comfort zone and making a difference:

"There's nothing like taking on a challenge bigger than yourself – it's the best way to make your personal struggles insignificant and forces you to think outside the box about how you can make a difference in the world."

Correa sees the possiblity of this becoming an annual event – or perhaps developing ongoing lessons or workshops for the entire community. He also acknowledges Stephanie Dallow of Kids4Drama for her extensive logistical support of the event, which is putting on its concerts at 4pm and 8pm on the 21st, at theThe Blockhouse Bay Community Centre, 524 Blockhouse Bay Road, in Auckland. To reserve tickets, email Correa at andrew.correa@gmail.com.

Read the entire interview at The Big Idea.

Soulmates, the movie created, written and directed by Landmark Education seminar leader Joan Sugerman about love, commitment and gender identity, is being shown at the Avalon Theatre in Washington DC, on February 21 at 8pm.

Sugerman describes the story and the process of making the film: "To make Soulmates I had to summon up my courage to express the spirit of two people whose lives are so inextricably bound they will do anything for love. I also had to be willing to push the limits of my own creative approach to fulfill on the vision of this movie. My daily mantra was 'take it to the extremes' and 'make the impossible possible'.

The film, which stars Dominique Plaisant and Elizabeth Canavan in the lead roles, won the best of festival award at the Berkeley Festival and was executive produced by Andrew Sugerman and Francis O'Brien, former Senior Vice President of Paramount. To get tickets to the February 21 show go to the Soulmates website, and to find out more also visit Sugerman's Soulmates blog. Parts of the film and audience reaction to it are shown below.

The story of Zindaba Nyirenda and her efforts to reduce poverty in Africa have been featured in the Daily Herald newspaper of suburban Chicago. Nyirenda credits The Landmark Forum with giving her a voice – for having her realize she could make a real and lasting difference in the world.

Nyirenda grew up a princess in Zambia, and experienced a sheltered and affluent upbringing. As she grew older, she saw the problems her country was having with poverty, disease and a lack of clean water. She has written a book titled "Ta-Lakata: The Tears of Africa" in which she hopes to make suburbanites more aware of these issues. The book also tells of what it took for Nyirenda to deal with family losses which were tied to issues that affect much of Africa – her father and a sister died of AIDS, while her mother died from drinking contaminated water.

Nyirenda also sees global connectedness as a key to making a difference. When she took part in Landmark's Self-Expression and Leadership Program, she created a project to link sister schools in the United States and Africa through distance learning. She founded Light on the Hill for Africa, a nonprofit that supports leaders of African villages.