What is LIGHT?
The Basics
The LIGHT Education Initiative is an incentive-based K-12 school program that seeks to inspire, prepare, and empower the next generation of humanitarians.
LIGHT is an acronym
for “Leadership through Innovation in Genocide and Human rights Teaching”
Creating safe schools
We’re committed to helping school districts meet their own inherent capacity to provide “safe, healthy, and supporting learning environments for all students and staff,” part of the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s vision for the creation of Safe Schools. We believe that in order for a school to be a “Safe School” it must be free from all forms of identity-based hate.
Organization
LIGHT is a program of Tree of Life, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and organizationally supported by the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh.
We're a growing movement!
Since the 2017-2018 school year, LIGHT has grown from a program in one school in Southwestern Pennsylvania to the flagship educational outreach program of Tree of Life and the Holocaust Center, a Pittsburgh institution since 1980.
Theory of Change
Vocabulary
CoDesign
An approach that invites end-users of a program to take an active role in the program design process, e.g. educators and students.
Humanitarian
An individual who seeks to improve people's lives and reduce suffering.
LIGHT Center
School-based humanities “maker-space” dedicated to Holocaust, genocide, and human rights education, remembrance, and advocacy.
LIGHT Coordinator
An educator who has been trained and certified by LIGHT and has completed the LIGHT onboarding process.
LIGHT Program
An educational program supported by LIGHT, often with purposeful partner organizations, that provides K-12 students with age-appropriate opportunities to learn and practice humanitarianism in order to transform remembrance of past atrocities into advocacy and action for traditionally marginalized groups and contemporary victims of hate.
PA Act 70 of 2014
The most comprehensive piece of legislation for the teaching of the Holocaust, genocide, and human rights in Pennsylvania schools, signed into law in 2014.
