Roosevelt Middle Students Join International Human Rights Week Letter Writing Campaign

Students at Roosevelt Middle School in West Palm Beach hope to continue to make a difference in the lives of political prisoners.  Todd LaVogue’s World Cultures and Geography classes will be conducting a write-a-thon on Friday, December 10, to coincide with the end of International Human Rights Week. All of the classes will be spending the day on the “Write a Letter, Save a Life” program sponsored by Amnesty International. Students will be writing a minimum of two letters each – one to a political prisoner to express their support and one to their captor to express outrage. The bios on different political prisoners, as well as prisoners of conscience, will be reviewed earlier in the week to select the recipients of the letters.

The majority of the letters written last year were to Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the general who placed her under house arrest in 1990.  Kyi’s recent release was a cause of celebration for those students who felt that their letters had made an impact on the decision to let her go.

For more information please contact Roosevelt Middle School Magnet Coordinator Dee Ann Tiffany at 561-822-0261 or tiffanyd@palmbeach.k12.fl.us or Mr. LaVogue at Todd.LaVogue@palmbeach.k12.fl.us .