November 10, 2025, TORONTO: The Zoryan Institute of Armenia (ZIA) collaborated with ArtSTEM, a program that works in parallel with state educational programs in the Republic of Armenia and offers an interactive learning environment accompanied by real-life project-based hands-on science experiments and art activities. Through its partnership with ArtSTEM, ZIA held an educational session on October 15, 2025, where students were assigned a project dedicated to Auora Mardaganian and Anne Frank, both teenagers who survived the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, respectively.
ZIA, in its desire to apply a new comparative, multidisciplinary approach to teaching the Armenian genocide, adopted the Zoryan Institute of Canada’s Promoting Equity, Tolerance, Reconciliation and Awareness Through Genocide Education Program. Developed and launched in the Spring of 2022, this program provided Ontario secondary school students in grades 10 to 12 with a foundational understanding of the numerous, complex, and often emotional issues related to crimes against humanity and genocide. In that program, educators presented select scenes from Aurora’s Sunrise, an animated documentary based on the Zoryan Institute oral history interview with Aurora Mardiganian, to be analyzed alongside excerpts from Anne Frank’s diary to achieve its comparative approach to genocide teaching.
The Aurora film was selected as a medium for teaching about genocide because it tells the brave story of the survival of a 14-year-old girl who lost everything during the Armenian Genocide. It is a story of humanity, generosity, resilience, and a true inspiration for today’s youth, and it aims to empower young women and girls to follow in Aurora’s brave footsteps and represent their own communities in the face of persecution and violence.
