Milkweed is awarded $20,000 grant from the Covenant Foundation of New York
Great news from Milkweed Producer Gail Rosenblum —
We are thrilled to announce that Milkweed, our long-in-the-works film project, has won a $20,000 grant from the esteemed Covenant Foundation of New York to pilot a series of accompanying empathy- and social justice-focused teaching lessons in 14 middle schools across the country.
The schools are: North Middle School, Brentwood, N.Y. (Allison Lynch); Contra Costa Jewish Day School, Lafayette, CA (Hadas Rave); Bonnie Brae, Basking Ridge, N.J. (Sharon Singleton); B’nai Shalom Day School, Greensboro, N.C. (Rebecca Ben-Gideon); Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy, Overland Park, KS, (Civia White); Sam. S. Bloom Learning Center, Poway, CA (Jessie Birnbaum); St. Bernard-Elmwood Place Jr/Sr High, St. Bernard, OH (Kristin Woosley); Immaculate Conception French Immersion School, Ontario, Canada (Steve Travale); Denver Academy of Torah, Denver, CO (Maxwell Rotbart); East Rutherford Middle School, Bostic, N.C. (Victoria P. Norman); Irwin Altman Middle School, Glen Oaks, N.Y. (Jennifer Haase + Catherin Guilz-Feldman); Talmud Torah of Minneapolis, St. Louis Park, MN (Kara Rosenwald); Austin Jewish Academy, Austin, TX (Heather Kantrowitz); Oakland Hebrew Day School, Oakland, CA (Tania Schweig + Bat Sheva Miller)
Our gratitude to them spills over, as it does to our extraordinary curriculum developers Dr. Ellen Kennedy, founder of World Without Genocide, and KK Neimann.
Once we receive feedback from our teachers, we will shift from pilot to full production, offering the Milkweed Middle School Teaching Project for free to any school that requests it beginning in the Fall of 2022 as part of my nonprofit MPGL Entertainment mission.
My heart is filled with gratitude for this boost from such a venerable organization whose leaders, especially Harlene Appelman, believe in us. My heart is also heavy because we are living in a time when as recently as October of 2021 a state curriculum developer suggested that teachers should consider “opposing views” when teaching about the Holocaust. We have so much work to do but we are up to the task.
A huge thanks to my animation team (Mike Owens, Wendie Owens, Annita Soble, Tom Lieberman, Audrey Robinson Favorito) and other talented people and organizations, including David Harris, executive director of Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, and Laura Zelle, with the Jewish Community Relations Council, who have offered tremendous support to us as we move forward.
As I’ve said many times, these horrors are not born from a vacuum. They build insidiously. It is our work and duty and honor to knock down those bricks and replace them with a foundation of love, compassion, integrity, courage and humanity.
Yours, Gail