BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE HOSTS INTERNATIONAL VIDEOCONFERENCE ON TERRORISM APRIL 26 AS PART OF GLOBAL YOUTH SERVICES DAY
Students from New York and Northern Ireland will participate
Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) will host a videoconference among young people in New York City and Northern Ireland on April 26 to mark Global Youth Service Day. The 90-minute videoconference will link students from BMCC and neighboring high schools near Ground Zero with students in three counties in Northern Ireland for a discussion about terrorism. “Our young people are our future, so in this increasingly global society, international dialogue among young people becomes the hope of the future,” said BMCC President Antonio Pérez.
The students from New York and Northern Ireland will discuss the impact of terrorism on their lives, their communities, and their visions for the future. The students will discuss the September 11 terrorist attack in New York and the 1998 Omagh bomb in Northern Ireland with particular attention to the effects of the attacks upon young people, and the involvement of young people in forging the future.
The BMCC students who will participate in the videoconference include Dennis Farr, who lost his job at Solomon Smith Barney in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks; Lidija Markes, a Croatian student whose home town was bombed 37 times during the war with Serbia; and Fatima Boone, a member of the BMCC Video Club, which made a documentary video, “out of Darkness,” about the college’s reopening October 1.
New York high school students from Stuyvesant, Murray Bergtraum, the High School for Leadership and Public Service, and the High School of Economics and Finance will also participate.
Approximately 15 high school and college students, both Catholic and Protestant, representing Tyrone, Fermanagh, and Derry Counties in Northern Ireland will discuss the impact of a car bomb, which exploded on August 15, 1998, in Omagh, killing 29 people and injuring 370 more.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will deliver the commencement address at BMCC’s graduation on May 31 has been invited to participate.
Borough of Manhattan Community College and Virtual Presence International are presenting the videoconference as a Global Youth Service Day event. Global Youth Day is an annual global event led by Youth Service America with the Global Youth Action Network as its key partner, together with a consortium of 32 International Organizations and well over 100 National Coordinating Committees.
The media is invited to attend.
