Mission Statement

It is the highest responsibility of human beings of all generations to work against cruelty and to leave our world safer and more just than they found it. As we, the students of Briarcliff High School, approach adulthood and prepare to take on roles of leadership, we have made a conscious choice to stand together in the name of human rights and global solidarity.

The ongoing genocide against non-Arab peoples in Darfur, Sudan is an outrage that no humane society can abide. In a systematic program of oppression that evokes the Holocaust of the 1940s, the Sudanese government has already murdered hundreds of thousands and traumatized untold numbers through rape, torture, and starvation. Yet, worldwide awareness of the extent of the atrocity in Darfur remains low, and the responses of powerful governments such as our own have been tentative at best. After viewing powerful scenes of destruction from the Holocaust in the documentary Night and Fog, students at our school became acutely conscious of the horrors of genocide. We determined to help humankind belatedly make good on its vow of “never again.”

The struggle to end the genocide in Darfur will not end with a local movement of high school students. Through our efforts to raise awareness in our own area, we will add our voices to the growing chorus of world citizens who refuse to be silent while one group of people moves to destroy another. Let us stand to show that stopping injustice anywhere is the task of humankind everywhere. We are young. We are resolute. We are one. We are Darfur.