Sojourn to the Past is a fourteen year old social justice education outreach program that has received the nation’s highest honor for an after-school program in the arts and humanities, presented at the White House by First Lady Michelle Obama. Also honored by the National Education Association, the US Congress and the California Legislature, Sojourn has served 400,000 youth in California and across the country with its three pronged approach to empowering and transforming them on a path of personal success and civic responsibility. This approach includes a ten-day academic immersion journey which takes youth out of their classrooms, along the path of the Civil Rights Movement through five states in the American South. They meet with veteran leaders of the Movement at the sites where history was made. The rigorous curriculum is aligned with state and national standards in Social Studies. Sojourn also conducts throughout the year, hundreds of in-school, interactive presentations about the Movement, relating those lessons to current human rights issues and conditions; e.g., bullying. From these experiences which are steeped in the Principles of Non Violence, youth acquire the tools to design and implement direct action plans in their schools and communities to promote awareness about social injustices. They become leaders for social change. Sojourn to the Past is recipient of the International Charities of America Seal of Excellence awarded to less than 2,000 of the one million charities operating in the US.
