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Lowell Milken Center awarded grant honoring Sendler
The Lowell Milken Center was recently awarded a substantial grant to benefit the Irena Sendler Award through the Life in a Jar foundation, Program Director Megan Felt said.
The center received a $10,000 grant from the Frank Family Foundation Fund on Monday to benefit the "For Improving the World" award, named in honor of Sendler's work. Tulsa Community Foundation adviser Brad Frank helped the Frank Family Foundation make the grant happen, Felt said. She noted the center is always looking for donations to help with costs incurred by having the award.
"We actually did have a family from Los Angeles who funded the award for several years," she said. "We've been looking for someone new to fund the award."
One teacher in Poland is annually awarded the monetary gift for their "innovative and inspirational" teaching of Holocaust education. In the past, the award has been $10,000, Felt said, and has included an American educator. Recipients are selected by a panel of judges who are leaders in Holocaust education.
This year's award ceremony will take place sometime in September and Felt said it is a "very special event" that features Poland's top representatives and officials.
Eleven educators from both Poland and the United States have been honored with the award since its inception.
The award originated in 2006 after the Association of "Children of the Holocaust" became associated with the Life in a Jar Foundation and then-Uniontown High School teacher Norm Conard.
Conard, Lowell Milken Center director, was personally nominated by Sendler as one of the award's first recipients that year.
The "Life in a Jar" presentation chronicled the life of Sendler who helped save 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
Felt, who was one of the original students who told Sendler's story and developed the project under Conard's instruction, said because of the "Life in a Jar" project, Holocaust education has become mandatory in Poland.
"You have changed Poland; you have changed the United States; you have changed the world," Sendler told Felt in May 2008, just days before she passed away.
"It's absolutely wonderful that her story becoming known has impacted other countries," she said. "Our goal was to make her story known throughout the world ... (It's) very amazing to see that."
Felt said neither she nor any of her fellow classmates could have envisioned the impact their project would have on people's lives.
"I don't want to predict what could happen in the future because I don't want to put a cap on it," she said. "(I'm) excited to see how the project goes and how it can continue to help other people with their goals and ideas.
"I'm excited to be on this amazing journey," Felt added.
For more information on Sendler, visit www.lowellmilkencenter.org and for information about the award, go to www.irenasendler.org.