ABOUT US

The cause:

Prevention of genocide and promotion of tolerance.

The goal:

To sponsor a wide variety of educational experiences that will inspire college students in a core group of northeastern US schools to become leaders in genocide prevention and promotion of tolerance.

The program elements:

While each program will be tailored to meet the specific needs and interests of each school, examples of educational programming that would be supported by IWJ include:

• A Holocaust/genocide film series with a noted scholar-in-residence
• Lectures by first-hand witnesses of the Holocaust or more contemporary genocides
• Speakers, courses, and films about issues of injustice, homophobia, hatred, and bullying in the United States
• Major traveling exhibits on the history, causes, and impact of the Holocaust or more contemporary genocides
• Leadership seminars to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., with pre- and post-trip programming
• Subsidized international trips for students of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds to visit historical sites and learn about the legacy of the Holocaust and/or contemporary genocides
  

The Cummings family has already sponsored or supported a number of Holocaust and genocide education events at Tufts University with a very meaningful impact on students. Specific events they recently sponsored or substantially supported include:

• The establishment of the Cummings/Hillel Program for Holocaust and Genocide Education, to be run through the Granoff Family Hillel Center at Tufts University.
• Eliezer Ayalon, an 84-year-old holocaust survivor, visited Tufts from Jerusalem and spoke to an overflowing auditorium of students in October 2010.
• Stephen and James Smith, co-founders of the Aegis Trust (focused on prevention of crimes against humanity) spoke with students in March 2011 about their work establishing The Holocaust Centre in the United Kingdom and Kigali Memorial Center in Rwanda.
• Students participated in service trips to the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda in the summers of 2010 and 2011.

With the establishment of IWJ on additional campuses, these events and others like them can be brought to many more students. Learn more about the founding of the Tufts program.

The partnerships:

	IWJ has agreed to provide significant financial assistance for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Visiting Scholars Program. This fellowship program supports research and writing about the Holocaust, and offers scholars unprecedented access to more than 60 million pages of Holocaust-related archival documentation.
	Joyce and Bill Cummings established the Cummings/Hillel Program for Holocaust and Genocide Education at Tufts University, which became fully operational in September 2011. Cummings Foundation also has a much larger relationship with Tufts University, including a $50 million commitment to the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.

The financial structure:

IWJ is reaching out to potential supporters who might wish to invest in a particular school by sponsoring the IWJ Program on up to six campuses, primarily in New England, with a commitment to IWJ of $1 million each. IWJ will thereafter provide $100,000 per year for a minimum guaranteed term of 15 years, to be used entirely at the discretion of each enrolled school for Holocaust, genocide, and injustice education. (It is not the intention of IWJ to audit school expenditures related to such programming.) This investment will have the effect of helping to diversify each school's portfolio, and will offer the equivalent of an unusually high annual return of approximately six percent, if the investment is treated as an annuity.

GET INVOLVED

Those who would like to learn more about funding an IWJ program are invited to contact Joyce Vyriotes at 781-932-7099 or cpcom@cummings.com.

CUMMINGS FOUNDATION

Institute for World Justice, Inc. is a 501 (c)(3) operating subsidiary of Cummings Foundation, Inc. (CFI). CFI is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a private operating foundation and is fully authorized to receive tax-deductible contributions. It owns and operates two large New Horizons continuing care retirement communities in Marlborough and Woburn, Massachusetts. It also owns Veterinary School at Tufts, LLC, in Grafton, Massachusetts, which is operated on its behalf exclusively by Tufts University. Current well-known members of the Foundation's Board include a retired president of the Boston Globe, a current and a former president of Tufts University, and a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

BIOGRAPHIES

Joyce and Bill Cummings

Born in Somerville, Massachusetts in 1937, Bill Cummings grew up in nearby Medford, where he attended public schools and, in 1958, graduated from Tufts University. Bill was thereafter employed in sales and marketing positions with Vick Chemical Company (Vaporub, etc.) of Greensboro, North Carolina, and Gortons of Gloucester, Inc., and he served in the U.S. Army Reserves. Subsequently, he acquired, built up, and sold a very old Medford, Massachusetts food products manufacturer, Wilmot H. Simonson Company.

Since 1970, Bill has been very successful in buying, building, and managing mostly commercial real estate in eastern Massachusetts. His firm has built or restored dozens of large or very large structures totaling 10 million square feet. Cummings Properties, LLC (CPL) currently provides business homes for more than 2,000 Massachusetts businesses and organizations. Apart from his role as founder of CPL, Bill is also the founder of Cummings Foundation, Inc. and New Horizons not-for-profit assisted and independent living communities in Woburn and Marlborough, MA, which currently provide homes for more than 500 seniors.

Bill's wife, Joyce, is a director of CPL and a trustee of Cummings Foundation, Inc. She is a former trustee of Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, where she once served as hospital dietician, and where she and Bill met. Joyce served two years as women's golf chair at Winchester Country Club, and is a past president of Winchester's EnKa Society, and a director of Winchester Community Music School and VNA Hospice Care, Inc. of Woburn. Bill and Joyce have four grown children.

Bill served 10 years as a charter trustee of Tufts University and is a former overseer of Tufts Medical School, director of Winchester Hospital, and founder and former publisher of three community newspapers-the Woburn Advocate, Stoneham Sun and Winchester Town Crier. He is still a trustee emeritus of Tufts University, and was chairman of Tufts' property-holding corporation (Walnut Hill Properties), as well as a bank director, and elected member and chairman of the Winchester Planning Board. He has worked as a licensed real estate broker, a licensed auctioneer, and even as a Massachusetts Justice of the Peace. Other outside activities include many philanthropic involvements, and several decades as a director and honorary director of Woburn Boys and Girls Club, Inc.

Bill was named 1998 Real Estate Entrepreneur of the Year for New England by Ernst & Young, LLP, and he was also awarded Tufts University's Distinguished Service Award "for service to Tufts, his community and his profession." His firm's restoration of the historic United Shoe Machinery Corp. complex in Beverly, Massachusetts was the subject of a very laudatory October 2, 1997 feature story in The Wall Street Journal by Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable.

Bill was awarded an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree by Tufts University in May 2006, and was named one of the "50 most influential Bostonians" by the Boston Business Journal in 2011. He is a golfer and a former director of Winchester Country Club, is an avid ocean sailor, and a licensed Scuba diver. In May 2011, he and Joyce joined a national philanthropic organization known as "The Giving Pledge." Later that year, they were named runners-up in the Boston Globe's annual "Bostonian of the Year" selection.