YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. Royal Valley middle school students in Mayetta Colin Caviness, Colin Everts and Luke Boyden began work on a documentary about Emma Darling Cushman — an American nurse who rescued thousands of Armenian children who had been orphaned during the genocide, cjonline.com reported.

When the Ottomans were expelling westerners from their territory after entering World War I, Cushman remained in Konya, Turkey, to continue operating a hospital she had worked at for over a decade. After the genocide began, she turned the hospital into an orphanage, found safe homes for endangered children and tried to bring shattered families back together.

As Boyden explained, this was extremely dangerous at a time when Ottoman forces were actively searching for Armenians: “Emma Darling Cushman is probably the bravest, kindest and most stubborn person we have ever researched. She stood up against an entire empire.”

After they finished their video, Caviness, Everts and Boyden were rewarded for their effort to tell Cushman’s story — they received first place in the 2016 Discovery Awards held by the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes in Fort Scott.