Have you ever wondered what it is like to be deaf? What it is like to live with a mental illness? What it was like to grow up in the segregated South in the 1940s? Or what it was like to grow up Jewish in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s? At the OCC Highland Lakes Campus Diversity Fair on March 28, 2013, the HL Campus Diversity Committee and OCC Libraries will host our fifth Human Library event that allows “readers” to checkout volunteer “books” who represented multiple areas of diversity. Human Books represent a cross section of society that have been stereotyped. “Books” are not asked to be experts, but instead asked to be themselves and tell their story in response to questions asked by the “Reader”. This exercise allows “Books” and “Readers” alike to meet people from other walks of life that they may not otherwise have had the opportunity to meet.
The Human Library was started several years ago in Denmark to help break down barriers and end prejudice. The idea was simple: if you meet people from other walks of life, people different than yourself, they become real and no longer belong to a faceless group. Once people start talking and getting to know one another, it becomes harder to discriminate against others as we realize we are more similar than we are different. For more information, please go to www.humanlibrary.org .
On Thursday March 28th, at the OCC Highland Lakes Campus Student Center from 12-3pm, our Human Library will have 15 Human Book titles. Please come and check them out.
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