Tali Nates

2022 IVLP Impact Award Project: Change Makers Program – Ensuring Sustainability for Youth Leaders of the FutureSouth Africa

Tali Nates is a historian who lectures internationally on Holocaust education, genocide prevention, reconciliation and human rights. She has published many articles and contributed chapters to several books, among them "God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors" (2015), "Remembering the Holocaust in Educational Settings" (2018) and "Conceptualizing Mass Violence, Representations, Recollections, and Reinterpretations" (2021). Tali has won many awards including the Kia Community Service Award (South Africa, 2015), the Gratias Agit Award (2020, Czech Republic) and the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award (2021). She serves on many Advisory Boards including that of the Interdisciplinary Academic Journal of Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and the Academic Advisory Group of the School of Social and Health Sciences, Monash University, South Africa. Tali was one of the founders of the Holocaust and Tutsi Genocide Survivors groups in Johannesburg. Born to a family of Holocaust survivors, her father and uncle were saved by Oskar Schindler. The rest of the family was murdered.

IVLP Impact Award Project: Change Makers Program – Ensuring Sustainability for Youth Leaders of the Future

The Change Makers Program built resilience and resistance to violence by organizing a youth leadership program for student leaders and their teachers. It helped develop the necessary skills to challenge the ideas of extremism and encouraged participants to become upstanders and change-makers in their society. In an effort to counter hatred and actively combat extremism, this 3-days interactive educational program promoted tolerance, pluralism and democracy and aimed to prevent violence and mass atrocities. It encouraged learning from history’s difficult past through the 3 case studies of the Holocaust, the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and Apartheid in South Africa in order to promote pluralism and democracy and counter extremism. The July 2021 unrest in South Africa showed that there was an urgent need to roll out the Change Makers Program and scale it up through a ‘train the trainer’ program to teachers, facilitators and thought leaders in order for it to become sustainable.

30 educators took part in the 'train the trainer' workshop to reflect on the importance of learning from history. The program encouraged the educators to reach more youth leaders in their communities and build resistance to violence using the resources provided at the training. Following the training, support was given to the new trainees in preparation of their youth training workshops. The Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre has offered continuous support to the new trainees in implementing the youth workshops in their schools and communities.

"This workshop has given me the time to self-introspect and see the importance of preparing for lessons using various methods." - Project Participant

IVLP Exchange Experience 

Tali was a participant in the IVLP Project Fundraising for Historical and Cultural Institutions before COVID-19 and in the present organized by the U.S. Department of State and CRDF Global.

Tali's exchange experience led to the development of her IVLP Impact Award Project: "My IVLP experience in 2021 was a wonderful one! I interacted with inspiring colleagues in South Africa and the USA and established long term partnerships which I cherish."

U.S. Communities Visited Virtually 

San Francisco, CA; Orlando, FL; Detroit, MI; New York City, NY; Charleston, SC

Country: South Africa

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