On a SOLE SOURCE basis, and under the authority of section 6.302-1of the Federal Acquistion Regulation (FAR), intend to award a SOLE SOURCE contract to Marc Aronson to develop a teacher workshop and program for schools to examine how the Civil War of the United States impacts the lives of students today, investigating their communities for ties with that event. 2011 through 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the United States' Civil War and 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This scope of work outlines a project that will use the 150th anniversary of President-elect Abraham Lincoln's February 11-23, 1861 inaugural trip from Springfield, Illinois to Washington DC to tie the two events together as an opportunity to engage teachers and school children in an important civics lesson on America's long journey toward freedom. In 1861, Lincoln's inaugural train passed through some of the nation's largest metropolitan areas on its trip from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, DC. Today, these cities are still among the largest in the nation and contain a very diverse population. They are, for the most part, many miles distant from traditional Civil War sites, such as battlefields, and are also far removed from the more famous civil rights locations. This project may be the only opportunity that students in these urban centers will be able to participate in a Civil War or Civil Rights commemorative program. Students will research what their community was like in 1861 as Lincoln's train passed through. Specifically, who lived there; what races they were; what they did for a living; and, what they thought of Lincoln and the possibility of war. The education program would also include a component that highlights the local Civil Rights stories, including research on, and if possible, interviews with local civil rights activists. In both cases, research would include what buildings and other physical landscape features still survive from both eras. Finally, the students would examine where their community is today in terms of diversity, wealth, education, and what they feel needs to be improved and how they would propose making those improvements. In order to connect with these students, Dr. Marc Aronson will develop a teacher workshop that outlines the objectives, provides templates on how to engage students, links with national and/or state standards, and provides teachers with the on-line capacity to share this information across the web. Mr. Aronson will also use the National Parks as examples of how the stories that are told at the National Parks can be told in their communities, i.e. Civil War homefront as told at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park can be told in any community; examples of Civil Rights protests that are interpreted at Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site can be found in many of our nation's communities. The National Park example will also demonstrate to the teachers and students the importance of preserving the places that are associated with the stories. Teachers will be directed to relevant National Parks sites and provided selections from relevant digital materials provided by team members to assist them with their local research projects. Finally, the final website will graphically model the relationship between the memorial project and the National Park system with a map overlay displaying National Parks and other historic sites related to the project memorial on a layer along side participating communities submissions. Each park or site icon will show an information card and a convenient link to the main website for that location. The graphical design will suggest that if the students want to see advanced, engaging examples of American history where it happens, they can easily visit these parks and other heritage sites like them. The juxtaposition of student memorials and fixed national historic sites will drive home the point that history can also be found in their local communities. HOWEVER, if any person or organization (other than Marc Aronson) believes that they are capable of fully meeting the NPS's requirements as described above, and capable of meeting those requirements at the highest level of quality indispensable to the NPS, may e-mail a Statement of Qualifications to
[email protected] no later than 3PM Mountain Time on September 14, 2010. Please note, that a Statement of Qualification does guarantee nor prove the capabilities of the vendor. Competition will then be used to determine the best value to the Government. Award determination will be made based on the technical capabilities, past performance and price, with technical capability and past performance being significantly more important than price.