Pushing to making a difference

Deepa Bharath

NEWPORT BEACH -- Josh Ludmir is not a naive teenager.

This Corona Del Mar High School senior knows he can’t change the world

and make the ideal of peaceful coexistence a reality overnight.

But he sure believes that empowering fellow students with knowledge

and awareness about diversity will help them take a positive step toward

tolerance.

So Ludmir put together the school’s first ever Tolerance Day to be

held Wednesday. For Ludmir, it is the culmination of his senior project

-- two years of hard work, of facing resistance from the school and the

students, of arguing with his peers.

“It’s hard to change the mind-set of a whole community,” he said. “In

our school, we have more or less a homogenous environment. That makes it

all the more important to create awareness and promote tolerance and

understanding through education.”

Ludmir calls himself a “double minority.” He is part Latino and part

Jewish. When he came to high school, Ludmir said he found not many

students were proud of their ethnicity.

“It’s like they just pass and proceed,” he said. The harshest

criticism Ludmir said he got was: “Oh well, nobody cares about this

stuff.” His project also seemed idealistic and impractical to the school.

“But I think I was persistent,” Ludmir said. “And with the incidents

of bullying and violence that happened in our school, people gradually

began to realize the need for Tolerance Day.”

The day’s program will include six workshops conducted by

organizations such as the Anti Defamation League and the Orange County

Human Relations Commission. The event will also feature speakers and

panel discussions on the subject of religion, hate crimes and tolerance.

Ludmir said he had a lot of philosophical questions in his own mind as

he organized the event.

“At times, I questioned my own motives for doing this,” he said. “But

every time, the answer I got was that even if I touch one person, I’d

consider the program a success.”