Most students give their teachers gifts of coffee mugs, chocolate, or flowers. This year, Eden Strunk’s students pooled their resources and found her a Cambodian genocide survivor to speak to the class.

Strunk had inspired them to care about human rights and genocide just as she inspired Ruth Hernandez, a ninth grader at Esperanza Charter Academy in Philadelphia who won USC Shoah Foundation’s first-ever IWitness Video Challenge last year. Strunk had assigned the challenge to her “advisory” class – a course devoted to getting students more engaged in their school and community.