The purpose of the Lowell Milken Center is to galvanize a movement for teaching respect and understanding among all people regardless of race, religion or creed.

The Center promotes this mission throughout America and around the world through educational projects that feature unsung heroes as role models to "repair the world."

About the Lowell Milken Center

The Lowell Milken Center works with schools around the world to teach respect and understanding among all people, by developing projects about unsung heroes whose actions promote these values, regardless of race, religion and creed. These projects are in the form of performances, documentaries and exhibits, or other creative ideas. Now entering its third year, the Lowell Milken Center has reached over 110,000 students and over 2,000 schools in all fifty states, with involvement growing world-wide.

The Lowell Milken Center follows two major objectives:

1. Teaching respect and understanding
2. Telling inspiring stories of unsung heroes to change behaviors and attitudes

We receive hundreds of letters and emails from teachers and schools across America each year, interested in starting projects of diversity and respect, such as the ones we have produced over the last 20 years at Uniontown High School in Uniontown, Kansas. Bias and prejudice still create a wall that separates people all over the world and causes great harm to American education. The recent resurgence of anti-Semitism and racial conflict present evidence of the need for education dealing with tolerance and respect. Supporting projects teaching respect within schools is a cornerstone of the Center. Life in a Jar is a perfect example of students causing change. We believe that children can reach over walls of bias that adults can never hope to, reaching out and changing lives. Young people can take the lead in inspiring others to repair the world.

These objectives will be accomplished through the development of hundreds of projects teaching respect and understanding across America each year in K-12 schools, using the creative arts of drama, film documentaries and exhibits. The Center is a student and teacher think-tank for projects teaching respect and understanding of all people. The Center also tells the story of Irena Sendler. Each project demonstrates the power of one person to change the world, using unsung heroes and illustrating the Jewish phrase tikkun olam ("repair the world").

When the Center uses the term "repair the world" it is intended to mean the social responsibility of fixing, not undoing the world. We use unsung heroes in history to show an example of human beings who have taken on this responsibility.