Spielberg will present Brian Roberts, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Comcast Corp., with the annual ambassadors of the founding of the Shoah for humanity Award at a gala benefit Monday night. The Foundation and Comcast have joined forces on educational initiatives to advance the mission of the Organization to promote tolerance.
Spielberg, winner of the Oscar three times, called Roberts "an advocate for a long time to find and develop innovative avenues to achieve and to educate young people."
"Brian vision and commitment to promote digital literacy in schools and communities across America make him a great Ambassador for learning," Spielberg said in a statement.
Spielberg was inspired by his epic of the Holocaust of 1993, "The list of Schindler," to establish the foundation of the Shoah, which brings together the video testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust and the eyewitnesses to use as educational tools for current and future generations. Shoah is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.
Today, Visual History Archive Foundation is one of the largest video libraries in the world, with nearly 52,000 testimony of 56 countries and in 32 languages. Its objective is to provide videos for researchers and educators as a way to educate young people about the suffering caused by xenophobia in the world.
Roberts, who first met Spielberg shortly after Comcast bought a majority interest of entertainment and media society NBCUniversal in January, said that it is "a Yes easy to want to help".
"They do not just on a video camera and documented, they are looking how to make relevant, how useful, how to preserve," Roberts told The Associated Press, Friday. "" "". These guys are sitting on a trove of opportunities to make education relevant for today and at the same time to connect with the past. ?
Comcast made survivor testimonies available free of charge to subscribers through its application, online and services iPad. The company also provides technical assistance for an application called IWitness, which will provide lesson plans and online access to 1,000 of its testimony videos when it launches later this year, Executive Director of Shoah Foundation Stephen Smith said.
Over 12 000 teachers in high schools around the United States have been trained on the multimedia curriculum developed by the Shoah Foundation, the Anti - Defamation League and the Memorial of Yad Vashem Holocaust of Israel.
"Access is really important, to bring the evidence of broader audiences free of charge, to share with the universities and youth in the schools of the city centre," said Smith. "Comcast has been a great partner."
The Foundation, based at the University of California in the South since 2006 and officially called the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, also gathers testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, and elsewhere.
Comcast is the largest provider of pay TV in the country and the owner of the majority of the media conglomerate NBC Universal. Comcast also owns the Philadelphia 76ers and Philadelphia Flyers and the stage where the two teams play, the Wells Fargo Center.
The Shoah Foundation refused to reveal the amount of the contribution from Comcast. More recently, Comcast reported net profit for the first quarter of $ 943 million, or 34 cents per share, for the first three months of the year. This is an increase of 9% of 866 million, or 31 cents a year ago.
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