The Wassmuth Center

THE 17th ANNUAL CHANGE YOUR WORLD CELEBRATION

The Wassmuth Center for Human Rights has their major fundraising event of the year coming up and since it will be totally virtual this year, it is now more accessible than ever!

As horrible as this pandemic has been one of the good things that has come from it is for people to have the ability to attend events on the other side of the world or to participate in something that they might not have had the time to take a part in before. Everyone has the opportunity to join the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights this year and to be a part of this inspiring movement! Whether you’ve been meaning to go to their Gala or you live on the other side of the country and have never even been to Boise before, this year they are offering tickets by donation.

The 17th Annual Change your World Celebration is on September 26th. Changing this event to a video platform will be a challenge as typically the event that took place was a Gala with 600 people that made up the majority of the Wassmuth Center’s funding for the year. I look forward to being a part of the virtual event this year as I believe that they will rise to the challenge.

The event will be live streaming from 6:30-8pm on September 26th. The theme is Passion to Action and you can register here.

The above link will also show you how to donate or participate in the silent auction that begins September 12th at 8am, with the live auction packages opening up September 25th.

THE WASSMUTH CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

So what exactly is the Wassmuth Center?

When you hear Wassmuth Center you might think of the Anne Frank Memorial. You would be correct. The staff, board and volunteers at the Wassmuth Center consider themselves to be the builder and home of the Memorial. What I didn’t realize until recently is how much more the Wassmuth Center has to offer. They guide 10,000 K-12 students and University students each year through their docent-led tours. They provide programs and resources for teachers and students. They organize and lead regular group trips to corners of the world that are in need of assistance or that have witnessed apartheid and genocide. For me it was shocking how many areas that have been afflicted by genocide and how little it is talked about. Growing up in school I never learned about things like this going on in areas such as Armenia, Cambodia, Laos and Mozambique.

EDUCATION

This is exactly why The Wassmuth Center’s work educating students and teachers is so important.

Another component of the Wassmuth Center is the Human Rights educator workshop during which Idaho educators are exposed to concepts and materials in human rights education – including how to educate their students about analyzing propaganda and teaching media literacy.

One of their newer programs is their Human Rights Certification program. It is a 6 hour program that can be done online. This program has proven to become very popular with corporations such as St. Luke’s and U.S. Bank encouraging their workforoce to get certified.

All of the curriculum that is developed is available online, along with a very active YouTube channel and a podcast called “Voices of Idaho.”

There truly is an abundance of educational material available and most is available free of charge.

BEING AN UPSTANDER

One of my favorite descriptions that I read on the website was a mother who was putting her young son to bed and he called her back into his room to ask some questions about what he had seen at the Wassmuth Center earlier that day. He asked his mom what the word “action” meant and when she explained that it meant to do something, he asked how he could take action as an upstander. She described some of the things that he could do to speak up on behalf of someone who is being unfairly treated. This mother was delighted that those were the thoughts that her son was having as he was falling asleep.

Most people, when witnessing instances of discrimination or oppression might be disturbed in seeing something like that take place right in front of them. I would say most people wouldn’t know exactly how to respond. The idea of an entire generation being educated and prepared to have the skills to respond to acts of hate and to be taught at such a young age, to me that really gives me so much hope for our future.

One of the ways that the Wassmuth Center plans on working towards this goal is with the Upstander Toolkit. This is something that is still being developed. How to say something when you see something or “see something, say something” in a way that diffuses the situation instead of escalating it. I’m sure at some point we’ve all witnessed someone bullying someone or just being cruel. A lot of times it’s not that people don’t want to say something, it’s that they don’t know how to respond. That is how being an “upstander” is different than being a bystander.

THE IDAHO ANNE FRANK HUMAN RIGHTS MEMORIAL

The idea for the Anne Frank Memorial originally came about after a traveling Anne Frank exhibit came through town in 1995. The exhibit commemorated the 50 year anniversary of Anne’s death and besides attracting tens of thousands of people, it also planted the seeds for a permanent tribute in Boise. In 1996 the Idaho Human Rights Education Center, now the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, was founded for the purpose of constructing a memorial to human rights. Three visionary founders – Reverend Dr. Nancy S. Taylor, Leslie Drake and Lisa Uhlmann – galvanized a vast team of volunteers to fundraise almost $1.7 million to build the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial that was dedicated to the public in 2002.

The Memorial is the only Anne Frank memorial in the United States, is one of the few places in the world where the entire text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is on public display, and is recognized as an international Site of Conscience.

In 2018, the Center added a covered area dedicated to one of the Memorial’s founding mothers, Marilyn Shuler. Under this area is where they hold the Summer Reading Program for children ages 4-8. Though it is not taking place this summer, typically, after getting registered ahead of time, children attend 6 sessions of readings. Many of the docents who lead the tours of the area are also teachers or former educators so the Center has the benefit of their expertise to rely on to lead the reading program.

Under this sheltered area there is also an interactive video station that plays educational video clips. In what appears to be another more recent addition, there are speakers in various locations in order to chronicle different historic events or interesting anecdotes. These additions allow children that are not of reading age to still be able to interact with their environment.

There are also various quotations from Anne Frank and many other human rights activists all throughout the park combining two of my favorite things, thought-provoking quotations and human rights advocacy. I wish I could post all the quotes on here. There are far too many quotations for me to fit on one page.

In Anne Frank’s diary she refers to a chestnut tree outside the window that is in bloom. A sapling from this very tree was awarded to the Wassmuth Center in a national competition and planted in the Memorial in 2015. There are also five additional trees from Anne’s friends and family members, many of whom are mentioned in Anne’s diary. Over the years they have traveled to the Wassmuth Center to plant and dedicate trees in memory of Anne Frank.

The Wassmuth Center and Memorial are nestled between the Boise River Greenbelt and the downtown Boise Library – centrally located across the street from the Idaho State Historical Museum and not far from Anne Morrison Park. The physical address is 777 S. 8th St. Boise, ID 83702.