A history teacher from Keswick School has been recognised as a community champion for his work undertaken for the Remembering Srebrenica charity organisation.
Dr Tony Foody was invited to a ceremony at the Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the ambassador, His Excellency, Vanja Filipovic.
The event was the culmination of De Montfort University’s Building Stronger Communities programme which aims to encourage tolerance and communication through increased awareness of the horrors of the Bosnian war including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
“It was a great honour to be invited to the embassy and to be recognised as a community champion by such a worthy cause,” said Tony.
“In the 1990s the Bosnian conflict was often on TV in the same way the war in Ukraine is now. However, in the years since then, the atrocities carried out in Bosnia and the intolerance which led to them has started to be forgotten in some cases.
“This is especially unfortunate given what is currently going on in the world. There are even those who would deny or downplay the seriousness of the horrors.”
Tony said that as a teacher he feels that he has a responsibility to inform and educate in order to increase understanding of how prejudice and hatred can lead to terrible outcomes.
“As such, I have delivered assemblies on this important theme for several years now and I always see a positive response,” he said. “We learn about the horrors of the past in order that we will not repeat them. Our students are very caring and outward looking and are always willing to respond to injustice. We also saw this recently with the extent of the generous charity work undertaken to support Ukraine.”
Tony is working with other Cumbrian teachers to try and spread the message even further to encourage students to be courageous in their own lives, to stand up to hatred and to speak out against injustice and choose hope instead.
“De Montfort University’s Building Stronger Communities programme and Remembering Srebrenica have provided me with the resources and motivation to do even more,” said Tony.
“I was humbled, during the visit to the embassy, to hear about so many other people doing great work to combat intolerance. This, and the compassion of our Cumbria students, makes me quite positive about the future.”
