CdA activist taking ‘Heroes’ worldwide

A longtime Coeur d’Alene human rights activist has struck a deal with the New York City-based Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States to market and sell its character education program, “A Study of Heroes.”

Marshall Mend, a founding member of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, is forming a nonprofit organization called Human Rights Sales and Marketing, which will donate a portion of the proceeds to human rights organizations, including the Coeur d’Alene-based Human Rights Education Institute.

“This program inspires kids to be mentors and heroes,” Mend said. “The program is so good and so exciting and something people can believe in.”

The Heroes program was developed over four years by Kathleen Dunlevy Morin and Rachel Oestreicher Bernheim of the Wallenberg Committee. The nonprofit organization devotes itself to promoting the humanitarian ideals of its namesake, a Swedish diplomat credited with saving thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II at great personal risk.

The Heroes program is an elaborate resource collection, made up of biographies on numerous historical figures. They include Wallenberg, Mahatma Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Chief Wilma Mankiller and others.

The program uses the lives of the heroes as interdisciplinary learning tools, mapping their travels, looking at events during the time period in which they lived, and developing discussion and essay questions based upon their actions.

Bernheim said she and Morin developed the program “as a monument to pass along Wallenberg’s values. A teacher can adapt this to a variety of uses and needs in one classroom.”

The tiny Orient School, in Orient, Wash., has been using the Heroes program for years and Principal Tara Holmes said she’s noticed the impact among her students. In a school of 39 students, she said, one eighth-grader recently attended the National Young Leaders Conference in Seattle and was selected as a speaker. And when the fifth- through eighth-grade students visited the food bank during a field trip, three-quarters of them said they’d like to volunteer.

“They’re studying the heroic character traits of those heroes,” Holmes said. “We try to transfer that knowledge to the community; then we bring in community heroes. Ultimately what we want to do is have the students find the hero within themselves.”

The Heroes program has been used by more than 1 million students in 50 states and three foreign countries. It has been used in New Jersey prisons, by Boys & Girls Clubs and by the schools of the Catholic Diocese of Evansville, Ind.

Now Mend, working with Ty Beaver of Coeur d’Alene, wants to disseminate it worldwide. He’s planning to develop a Web site and hire salespeople who will learn to market it and to educate others on its potential uses.

Half the money from each unit sold will go back to the Wallenberg Committee. The remaining half will be divided three ways. One-third will go to human rights organizations, one-third to the salesman as commission, and the remaining third will be used to run the nonprofit.

“I’m inspired by the program because it deals with a heart issue,” Beaver said. “It’s designed to inspire kids to be the great people they can be.”