IDEA - Center for the Voices of Humanity - Leaping Over the Gulfs That Seperate

The IDEA Center for the Voices of Humanity is an international resource center on stigma, identity, and human rights. Seneca Falls, New York, was chosen as the permanent location for the IDEA Center as well as for the International Offices of IDEA because of its power of place, which emanates from the area’s 150-year tradition of advocating for universal human rights, including the women’s rights and antislavery movements.

The Center’s gallery displays photographs, quotations, poetry and art that reveal the wisdom and creativity that so often emerge from individuals who have experienced personal tragedy, social injustice and attempts to crush the human spirit.

The Center’s library includes a large number of personal narratives of individuals who have confronted social injustice, survived attempts to rob them of their humanity, and created an awareness of the dangers of apathy and indifference. Publications, conferences and student opportunities complete the Center’s activities, designed to utilize the wisdom of the voices of humanity to promote the peace that comes through the understanding, respect and appreciation of diversity.

As a pathway of hope, the IDEA Center for the Voices of Humanity vividly illustrates that, although you cannot always control what happens in life, you can choose how you will respond.

Here we are, definitively and definitely, together leaping over the gulfs that separate, building hopes, zooming in from the global to the personal, creating goals and hopes, giving others and ourselves the positive experience of freedom from prejudice.

-- Ymelda Beauchamp, IDEA, USA