Human Rights Education for rural youth
Goal: Enabling rural youth to advocate for human rights, by filling the educational and skills gap that exist between highly educated youth and youth living in rural areas.
Objectives:
To develop and deliver through a learning experience a set of tools and skills that can enable rural youth to advocate for human rights.
To build a positive attitude among the youth, by asserting the skills that they have in advocating for human rights.
To understand build main elements of an advocacy campaign by planning an advocacy plan for Human Rights, appropriate for rural areas.
To foster international cooperation with impact to rural youth, in order to emphasize the EU policies on education and life-long learning.
To provide space for rural youth to actively contribute in society through their involvement in experienced NGOs.
To develop a positive experience that can be used as an assessment instrument on Human Rights Implementation at different realities.
To establish a positive floor for future international cooperations.
Activity:
The project make use of three main activities as its main pillars: A Training course, Capacity building activities, and a Seminar.
A1- Training course on Action Research and Human Rights Education will be the opening activity. It will gather 3 or 4 participant per country, one of them will be team/coach leader and the others will be members of research teams. The training will enable them to understand similarities and realities related to human rights education level among partner countries, in urban and rural areas. It will serve also to develop tools and methodology –action research- to asses compare the situation. The main issues addressed from the training will be; Action Research and Human Rights, Leadership skills, Campaigning. During the training the participants will set a research plan for their local environment, and also an activity plan for local campaigning. Thus it will help in the overall management of the project.
A2- Capacity building activity: action research in respective countries. The topic will be related to Human Rights Education of youth. This will serve to create a baseline on the issue and define the main needs to be developed in the near future. It will be followed by a campaign sharing the findings of the Action research. The action research and campaign will both work on raising awareness of the main actors on the issue, and helping youth to get more informed.
Each partner organization will do action researches in their local communities, using of the following tools
-Focus groups meeting (7-10persons per meeting, 2 meetings) total 20 persons
-Survey (100 questionnaires)
-Interviews 3 main local actors (NGOs local authorities and schools)
-Information campaign
A3- Seminar: this will serve to share the results each partner work and build a floor for Human Rights Education mechanism in rural areas. It will gather representatives of each partner, the research team members and others (?) e.g. main actors related to Human Rights Education at rural areas. It will make visible aspects of local researches and the campaign; as well it will develop continuity plans and future actions on providing basic HRE skills for rural youth. The experience of the promoters will be condensed in a set of tools that will be shared among other organizations, which can make use of it. The organizations will have the main skills to do periodic comparative action researches to guide their work and at the same time advocate at local level.
The project will involve active youth from rural and remote areas, together with youth adhering in CSOs and experts. Together they will go through a sharing experience to better analyze and understand rural realities, especially the main stakeholders affecting the life. Then by sharing experiences and through non-formal education, the participants will develop their skills in Human Rights Education, in the frame of rural area context. Afterwards they will learn on campaigning and next the participants will develop a campaign and its plan, addressing human right issues in a rural context.
The training course will gather nearly 34 young people, from rural areas and CSO activists, thus creating a climax for sharing and learning. It will be based on non-formal education and experiential learning, and will provide space for the young participants to work together in reaching common goals. Timeline of the project will last 18 months, dedicating the necessary time to the learning component and also to the productivity, thus enabling the participants to design a local human rights campaign in a rural area.