FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 1, 2014 / Julia Winer
Assistant Director of Communications
(860) 509-3666
CREC’s Metropolitan Learning Center Continues Efforts to Raise Awareness About Modern-Day Slavery:
MLC to Host Ninth Annual Abolitionist Fair
(Bloomfield, CT) A group of students who are passionately committed to ending modern-day slavery is hosting the Ninth Annual Abolitionist Fair: The Struggle for Freedom at CREC’s Metropolitan Learning Center for Global and International Studies (MLC) on Wednesday, March 26. MLC students will be joined by other activists and students from anti-slavery groups such as the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Love 146, Connecticut Coalition Against Trafficking, and Free the Slaves, the largest anti-slavery organization in the United States. The event will run from 9:00 a.m. to noon and will feature a panel discussing trafficking, with a focus on what is happening in Connecticut. The panel will run from 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. and include Chris Bidorini from the Department of Children and Families and Nicole von Oy from Love 146.
The Abolitionist Fair began at MLC eight years ago when a group of 9th grade U.S. History students were studying Connecticut’s complicity in slavery in the 1800s. After criticizing Northerners for tacitly supporting Southern slavery at that time, the students read an article about how our society is unwittingly complicit in modern-day slavery.
“Students were horrified to learn that slavery still exists and furthermore that their buying habits often support it,” explained Wendy Nelson-Kauffman, a teacher a MLC and the program’s advisor. The students decided to fight this modern injustice by creating a group called SASS – Student Abolitionists Stopping Slavery.
The Abolitionist Fair has been extremely successful for eight years running, and this year’s fair will prove no exception. Approximately 100 students have prepared multimedia displays, interactive games, dramatic presentations and other projects to educate students from around the community about the horrors of modern-day slavery and what they can do to end it. Some of the interactive games include, “Are You Smarter than a SASS member,” a slavery obstacle course, and a human board game in which participants walk the path to free a slave.
“I am amazed and inspired by the dedication of our young people to fight this injustice.” Nelson-Kauffman says of the group.
The SASS students meet weekly after classes to discuss this topic and how to raise awareness. SASS members earlier this year presented their work in Cincinnati at the National Conference of Historians Against Slavery. In the past, SASS members have presented their work against slavery to countless local high schools and churches, as well as at international conferences such as the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade conference at Yale University, the iEARN conference in Senegal, Africa, the Conference on Criminal Trafficking and Slavery at the University of Illinois, and at a United Nations subcommittee meeting in New York.
The Ninth Annual Abolitionist Fair will be held on March 26 from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. at the Metropolitan Learning Center for Global and International Studies, 1551 Blue Hills Avenue, Bloomfield, CT, 06002. Schools and community members are welcome to attend. For information about how you or your school, company, or community group can get involved, please contact Lynette Brown at or 860-242-7834.
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With the world as their classroom, students at the CREC Metropolitan Learning Center for Global and International Studies prepare for success in college and careers in the global workforce. Much of the education in the school’s specially designed global-systems curriculum takes place beyond the classroom through the Metropolitan Learning Center’s extensive study and travel abroad program. The CREC Metropolitan Learning Center is a public school of choice for residents of the Greater Hartford area. The school enrolls students in Grades 6 through 12, and its magnet themes are science, technology, and global studies.
The Capitol Region Education Council was established in 1966.Working with and for its member districts, CREC has developed a wide array of cost-effective and high-quality programs and services to meet the educational needs of children and adults in the region.CREC regularly serves 36 towns in Greater Hartford, offering more than 120 programs to more than 150,000 students annually. CREC manages more than 35 facilities throughout the area, including 19 interdistrict magnet schools.More information about CREC or CREC’s award-winning magnet schools is available at www.crec.org
Capitol Region Education Council www.crec.org