MONTREAL — The inaugural Janusz Korczak Award for Children’s Rights, created by the Segal Centre for Performing Arts and named for a Holocaust hero, went to Montreal-based physician Kirsten Johnson for her humanitarian work in areas of conflict, particularly where children and women are victims.
Kirsten Johnson. [Outpost Magazine photo]
The award was presented following a recent performance by the Segal youth drama group YAYA of the play No More Raisins, No More Almonds, which aims to promote intercultural dialogue and tolerance.
“We created this award to pay tribute to Dr. Janusz Korczak and honour a Canadian citizen or organization that has shown an outstanding commitment to helping children in conflict regions,” said Segal artistic director Bryna Wasserman.
She described Johnson as “a passionate and tireless protector of the world’s most vulnerable.”
As a member of the Child Soldier Initiative, Johnson works with a number of organizations devoted to eradicating the use of child soldiers. She has been involved in developing rehabilitation programs for former child combatants through her study of the long-term mental health of survivors of conflicts in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In 2005, she was awarded the New Investigator Award of Excellence at the Global Health Conference in Washington, D.C., in recognition of her research on malnutrition in refugee and displaced person camps.
Johnson has pioneered techniques for training humanitarian workers in disaster response, which became part of the curriculum in an inter-university initiative between Harvard, Tufts, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Feinstein Famine Centre.
Korczak was the pen name of Polish-Jewish pediatrician, author and educator Henryk Goldszmit. He founded the first progressive orphanages in Poland to shelter Jewish and Catholic children.
After repeatedly turning down offers of sanctuary from the Polish resistance, he chose to die with the Jewish orphans in his care at the Treblinka concentration camp in 1942.
YAYA (Young Actors for Young Audiences) is part of the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre and the Academy at the Segal Centre. Made up of actors aged eight to 18 from different backgrounds, No More Raisins, No More Almonds, a staple of its repertoire, tells the story of Jewish youths trapped in Nazi ghettos in World War II.
Written by child Holocaust survivor and educator Batia Bettman, the play is followed by a “talk back” between the actors and their peers in the audience. The performance was interpreted in sign language by Natalie Constantine.
Compiled by CJN Staff