Featured Action Project Videos

Through independent ventures in many sizes and formats, our Senior Fellows take social change in their own hands.

A core element of Humanity in Action is the Action. As part of the Fellowship experience, our Fellows implement an Action Project: an independent civic initiative focused on promoting democratic values in their own communities, and beyond. The projects are as diverse as Humanity in Action Fellows. Our Fellows apply their new knowledge and perspectives to the communities they impact—in whatever format they find meaningful. This page features short videos on over 30 different projects. The films were produced by our Senior Fellows Spencer Heijnen and Joel Vargas with voice overs from Senior Fellow Anna Duensing.

• My 100 Day Plans

  This civic engagement campaign encouraged small acts of resistance, rebuilding and recharging during the first 100 days of the Trump Administration. Senior Fellows and Board members Michael Kunichika and Heather Lord along with a team of activists led the campaign, which reached over 500,000 people.

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• Empowering Victims to Report Hate Speech

  Senior Fellow Grazyna Baranowska cooperated with many organizations to run training programs to recruit volunteers for the identification and reporting of hate speech as well as to provide the public with resources for effectively supporting victims of such.

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• Against Urban Antisemitism

  A campaign led by Senior Fellow Jan Kirschenbaum to counter the Antisemitic rhetoric and non-action of the Polish government through a walking tour, a game, a book, workshops on anti-discrimination, and more. Over 600 people in the city of Wrocław took part.

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• Last Days in Dilley

  Senior Fellow Aseem Mehta led this visual reflection for community-driven advocacy against refugee detention. Through short documentaries, community organizing and public presentations, it facilitated the creation of resource networks to confront the mass incarceration of Central American refugee families in the US.

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• Space & Memory: The Presence of Jewish Absence

  With the presence of Jewish absence in Poland's contemporary landscape, this project led a multidisciplinary approach to reactivate spacial memorials of Poland's Jews. It was created by Senior Fellows Łukasz Posłuszny, Marissa Sophia Schneiderman and Michelle Shofet .

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• Reclaiming the Body Liberating the Mind

  A series of events at Duke University that gathered university students, particularly of African descent, to discuss and highlight the intersecting challenges the African Diaspora faces today. Through the project, Senior Fellow Denzel Caldewell engaged hundreds of university students in implementing methods to combat 21st century racism.

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• Geert Does Not Speak For Me

  Senior Fellow Spencer Heijnen was frustrated that political parties did not overtly distance themselves from right-wing populist Geert Wilders’ narratives during his parliamentary campaign. With his team, Spencer developed wristbands stating “Geert does not speak for me.” Garnering massive media attention, over 5,000 wristbands were distributed across five major Dutch cities in a single day. Thousands more were sold online.

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• Decent Housekeeping

  Formal documentation of any employer-employee relationship creates rights and obligations within the working relationship. Yet such rarely exists in the case of domestic work in the Netherlands. Developed by a team of Dutch Senior Fellows, this project aimed to improve the working conditions of domestic workers in the Netherlands by raising awareness among employers.

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• Pull the Brake Against Roma Discrimination

  Led by a number of Senior Fellows from various countries, pullthebrake.eu was a large-scale awareness campaign fighting Antiziganism and hatred toward Roma in Europe. With on- and offline methods, it ran simultaneously in Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia across 17 cities and in 13 languages.

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• Stop le Contrôle au Faciès

  Despite stop and frisk practices disproportionately affecting racial minorities in France, no effective method of tracing such and no legal recourse available for victims existed at the time the project was conducted. Led by French Senior Fellows, the project added the issue to the media’s agenda during a presidential campaign and paved the way for the first class action lawsuit in this realm. It encouraged legislators to draft three proposed laws that would require police officers to record these stops, in an effort to collect official data on stop and frisk incidents.

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• The Ghoul Exhibition

  The Ghoul Exhibition was an artistic response to the unfolding tragedy of gun violence in the United States. Created by Senior Fellow Héctor Álvarez as a solo theater performance piece, it merged performance and social engagement through chartering links between gun deaths, race, geography, economics, mental illness and discrimination.

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• Indigenous Corps of Discovery

  Senior Fellow Roo George-Warren gave truth-telling tours of the Smithsonian’s Presidential Portrait Gallery to more than 150 people. Each tour presented audiences with a research-based indigenous retelling of US presidential history. By centering indigenous people in the telling of US history, the tours highlighted the curatorial decisions used in creating exhibitions and how these decisions hide indigenous peoples, their histories, and the imperial story of the United States.

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• Danish Children in Nazi Captivity

  Senior Fellow Solvej Berlau wanted to ensure that Danish students would not lose the opportunity to learn about the role Theresienstadt played in Denmark’s World War II history. She decided to create a documentary film about Theresienstadt by telling the stories of six Jewish children who were transported from Denmark to the concentration camp.

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• with WINGS and ROOTS

  Senior Fellow Christina Antonakos-Wallace used the power of filmmaking to juxtapose two cities emblematic of global migration to North America and Europe. With WINGS and ROOTS is a transmedia documentary, web and education project that reframes migration from being a national “problem,” to a global reality through the voices of children of immigrants in Berlin and NYC.

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• When I Fall Silent, Silent Falls the World

  Silent Falls the World raised awareness about the situation Roma found themselves in as a result of the armed conflict in Kosovo. Led by a team of Senior Fellows, the project aimed to stir up discussions about the living conditions Roma face in Europe and about how, through the dissemination of knowledge, mutual understanding and empathy, support can best be built.

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• The Turquoise Tent

  Senior Fellow Cagdas Citirikkaya wanted to promote Turkish culture in Denmark as a way of challenging the dominant and negative image that Turks are often confronted with in Danish society. Cagdas organized a Danish-Turkish arts and music festival in Aarhus, Denmark. It presented music, theatre, art, cooking courses and other aspects of both Danish and Turkish culture in the hope that participants from different backgrounds could challenge their own prejudices through interacting and enjoying culture together.

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• The Optimist Project

  The Optimist Project was the initiative of Senior Fellows and Science Po Lyon alumni Laura Cahier and Lumir Lapray. Their project counteracted drop-out rates of students from lower socioeconomic as well as rural and inner-city backgrounds in France by providing opportunities for training and workshops that support these students in securing professional employment and mentorship while studying at one of France's most elite universities.

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• The NET Mentoring Group

  The NET Mentoring Group is a Boston-based non-profit organization founded by Senior Fellow Jamal Grant. It aims to narrow the opportunity gaps in STEM education for young inner-city students of underprivileged backgrounds.

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• Bridging Communities

  Bridging Communities was developed by Senior Fellow Amy Hong who, with a team of activists and Senior Fellows, organized training programs on intercultural and non-violent communication to fight increasing polarization around migration, integration and national identity with paths to healing and understanding. The project released short films highlighting the experiences of six different minority groups in France.

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• Miman's Study Guide

  Miman’s Story was developed by Senior Fellow Christina Antonakos-Wallace and Lotti Schulz. Based on connections made and material gathered as part of producing the documentary film With WINGS and ROOTS, the project created multi-media educational material about Anti-Roma racism for high schools.

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• ROMA: A Discussion on Diversity

  This project was an e-learning course of lectures and discussions created by Senior Fellow Sahra-Josephine Hjorth and the Danish non-profit CanopyLAB. The course focused on the treatment of Roma in Europe and drew parallels to current debates around migration.

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  https://vimeo.com/174548922

• Roman Medya

  Roman Medya is an e-platform for NGOs and activists to provide information around the discrimination of Roma and Antisemitism in Europe. Based out of Turkey, the project ran workshops that provided Turkish Roma NGO representatives with skill-sets and knowledge to interact successfully with media representatives and to use media tools for strategic advocacy.

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• The Anne Frank Project Poznań

  This project was a summer school of tolerance and countering Antisemitism. Run by the Senior Fellows Sudip Bhandari and Łukasz Niparko, the project engaged high school students who over two weeks dived into the history of Poznań's Jews.

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• Learning Assistance for Roma Children

  Launched by Senior Fellow Jarmila Rybicka, this project was a grassroots tutoring service that supported Roma youth in Warsaw's Praga District.

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• The Human Library

  The Human Library provided an opportunity for locally born and foreign-born populations to learn from one another through personal interactions in Poland. During this event, newcomers told their life stories to Polish readers including students from the partner school, their families and other local community members.

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• The Sistas Club

  The Sistas Club is an organization dedicated to boosting the professional and academic success of young female students. Senior Fellow Yolande Libene created the organization to empower young girls from underprivileged communities to maximize their positive impact as leaders and to accomplish their dream careers.

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• MLK Day 2015

  Seeing that Martin Luther King JR's dream for equality remained far from being achieved, Senior Fellows Nawal Mustafa and Sarah Asmelash partnered with our Dutch office to create an annual event that not only commemorated the legacy of Dr. King, but also encouraged future activism against systemic racism.

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• Diversity on the Other Side of the Wall

  Developed by Senior Fellow Ina Doublekova, this project was an intensive seven-day workshop that challenged participants’ notions of co-existence and multiculturalism in Bulgaria, with a particular focus on Muslim life in Sofia.

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• Pink Spectacles of Polish Communism

  Developed by Senior Fellow Mieszko Hajkowski, this project used academic discourse as a way to share lived stories from the LGBT movement in the People's Republic of Poland as well as the cultural achievements of the LGBT community in that time period.

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• Toward Durable Solutions for Bosnia's Internally Displaced

  Seventeen years after the end of the war, some 113,000 people within Bosnia remained in internal displacement, approximately 8,500 of whom lived in facilities referred to “Collective Centers.” By conducting interviews with members of Bosnia’s internally displaced population, this project identified and recommended solutions to the challenges Bosnia's internally displaced face.

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• Thawing the Freeze & Meeting of Perspectives

  In response to a need for modern civics education in post-Soviet Moldova, under the leadership of Senior Fellow Zachariah Falconer-Stout Humanity in Action teamed up with the U.S. Peace Corps, Moldovan university students and the Moldovan NGO MilleniuM for a conference that explored diversity and democracy and that developed innovative simulation games to teach human rights and active citizenship.

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• Youth Social Entrepreneurship School

  Senior Fellow Iuliia Zemlytska designed a three-part project to give a push to young entrepreneurs in Ukraine. Besides a public event and a training program that taught social entrepreneurship to the general public, she created a competitive program for 15 young Ukrainian entrepreneurs to meet with and learn from established entrepreneurs.

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• The Wave of Smears

  This project by Senior Fellows Anton Guhl and Gülay Gün raised awareness of covert Antisemitism, educated about the history of hateful graffiti in Hamburg and developed teaching material for high school students in Germany.

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• GośćInność

  Inspired to combat the offensive, negative connotations surrounding the word ‘refugee’ in Poland, Humanity in Action Senior Fellow Nina Lazarcyzk created educational cooking workshops called Hospitality Workshops (GośćInność) dedicated for youth, run by migrants and refugees, in order to bring people together.

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• Nagymama and I

  Senior Fellow Mikaela v. Freiesleben retraced her grandmother's history from her childhood as a young Jewish woman who escaped and survived persecution in Sweden.

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• The Sierra Leone Memory Project

  Developed by the Senior Fellows Joseph Kaifala and Liat Krawczyk, the Sierra Leone Memory Project was an oral history project dedicated to recording the histories of former child soldiers, amputees, rape victims and all those who lived through the violent civil war in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002.

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• Holocaust Identification Cards

  Inspired by the Holocaust Identification Cards, which are given at the entrance of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Senior Fellow Inga Kotlo conducted research in her hometown Mostar to gather information for Holocaust Identification cards as a tribute to the citizens of Mostar who lost their lives during World War II.

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• Memory Walk

  Senior Fellows Laura Boerhout and Lamija Landžo created the 5-day Memory Walk workshop in Sarajevo to encourage Bosnian youth from different backgrounds to reflect critically on the monuments and contested histories in their living environment. Professional short films created through the workshops were screened during a film festival in Sarajevo.

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• Minority Voices from Poland

  Developed by Senior Fellows David Liebers and Daniel Jezierski, this project developed an oral history collection of reflections and stories from members of, and academic experts on, the nine national and four ethnic minority groups recognized by the Polish state.

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