Human Rights Education with Young People: values, methods and tools

Aims & objectives

The objectives of the project were the following:
1. To improve youth workers and youth leaders understanding of the concepts of Human Rights, Human Rights education and Human Rights values;
2. To promote human rights education as a way of to create more tolerant societies;
3. To present different tools and methods that can be used by the youth workers and youth leaders in daily work with young people in order to address the issues of human rights;
4. To create a safe space for the participants to try out human rights education methods and tools with their peers;
5. To encourage youth workers and youth leaders to be active citizens and take action to protect human rights in their communities;
6. To create space for intercultural learning and European cooperation.

Target group & international/intercultural composition of the group & team

The team was composed of 2 trainers (Macedonian and Lithuanian) and 1 support staff person (Lithuanian).

The target group was 24 youth workers and youth leaders from Macedonia, Croatia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Italy, and Romania

Training methods used & main activities

The activities were based on non-formal education methodology and followed the main principles of NFE - equal relationship between educators and learners, learning with and from the group, inclusive, learner oriented where the learner has the real influence on how the learning process is organised, etc. Main methods used were: work in group, work in pairs, brainstorming, role play, theatre, forum theatre, self-reflection, creative workshops, simulation, discussions, debates, preparing and implementing a workshop, open space, etc.

Outcomes of the activity

Skills that were planned to be improved during this training course, are very closely connected with the ability to use non-formal education methods and prepare and run workshops on human rights issues. As participants indicated in their evaluation forms that they feel more confident in running HRE workshops, we can presume that the following skills were acquired:
- ability to address human rights issues in work with young people;
- identifying learning needs of the group;
- using different tools for HRE;
- to combine and modify methods according to the group;
- preparing, running and evaluating workshops;
- presentation skills, public speaking.

Your tasks and responsibilities within the team

Co-developing and co-implementing the whole programme of the training course: introductory, topic-related, and evaluation sessions.
Preparation of the application and report.

I worked on this training for 7 days as a full time trainer.