Supporters of the Allen County Historical Society received a history lesson about the Polish Solidarity Movement Tuesday night at their annual meeting.
Mary Fischer and Madelyn Stark, students at the Fort Scott Christian Learning Center, gave the dramatic tutorial for 85 ACHS members who gathered at the North Community Building and also an event to raise money to repair and remodel the Old Jail Museum.
The students performed their National History Day entry, “Solidarity: A Striking Success,” which won first in Kansas to qualify for the national contest in College Park, Md.
The girls were aided in their research and project development by the resources of the Lowell Milken Center in Fort Scott, a non-profit established in 2007 to work with students around the world, said Megan Felt, program director.
The Milken Center encourages project-based learning, with emphasis on unsung heroes, said Felt, herself a National History Day competitor with the much acclaimed “Life in the Jar” presentation that she and others put together while students at Uniontown High School in the late 1990s.
The presentation told about Irena Sendler and her successes during World War II in saving more than 2,500 Jewish children from persecution by the Nazis. The play later was adapted to television as “The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler.”
“We found one Website in 1999 that mentioned Irena Sendler,” Felt said. Today, after the “Life in a Jar” success, “there are more than 500,000.”
The play also was the cornerstone project that led to Lowell Milken, philanthropist and businessman, establishing the Milken Center, directed by Norm Conard, formerly a Uniontown teacher who had a central role in students there becoming involved in History Day events.
“We, at the Milken Center, help students discover unsung heroes and then tell their stories,” Felt said.
The Milken Center’s outreach is to all 50 states and also extends to students in many foreign countries.
Felt recalled “how exciting it was to see students in Poland doing projects about the Holocaust, which just five years ago would have been forbidden.”
In addition to students, fellows and interns come to the Milken Center to learn how to develop projects and also lend their expertise, she said.
The projects, in most cases, show how one person can make a difference, Felt observed, and allowed that the well of prospects for new projects was far from dry.
“I have more than 40 pages of unsung heroes on my computer,” she said.
THIS YEAR’S ACHS annual meeting was a departure from those of the past.
Jeff Kluever, society director, said he visited in the Milken Center and afterward wondered how its fare could be brought to Allen County.
