How can learning about human rights as a way of life, through all sectors of society, be best introduced and used for effective economic and social transformation to affirm dignity and achieve justice and  equality? 

 

Wiki pages on this Community of Practice

 

1) General - you are on it!

2) Kenya Action Research: Human Rights for Social Transformation

3) Brazil Exchange

4) Resource page for resources on TLHR

 

 See Draft Framework on Transformative Learning for Human Rights  soon! 

 

Some questions to consider

 

• What do you understand by the term transformative learning for human rights? Or human rights learning for personal and societal transformation?You will notice even from this page that terms are changing all over the place! Transformative learning versus learning for transformation; economic and social transformation versus societal transformation…. There are lots of areas we need to work on, but basic clarity in our terms is certainly one of them!  Share with us your understanding of these terms and which term you feel should be the focus!

 

• What triggers transformation? How have you seen examples of this in your work? What are the various methods and practices through which you and the groups you work with learn and change, individually and collectively? what is the difference between innovative learning practices and one that lead to transformation?

 

• How does linking transformative methodologies to human rights learning strengthen enable us to better reach people and help them to take up human rights as effective tools in their poverty based struggles?

 

• What would be the necessary components of a framework to explore what makes a practice transformative in our human rights work?

 

 

Your thoughts??? ....Please use this space here to add your thoughts!

 

 

 

Different Processes on Transformative Learning For Human Rights

 

The Retreat

Equalinrights and The People’s Movement for Human Rights Learning – PDHRE hosted a 4 day retreat  Awakening the Power of Human Rights Learning – Moving from Theory to Action – in late October  2007. See Equalinrights website for:

• The background paper for more detail on the thoughts and aims behind the retreat;
• Overview of participants’ responses to questions posed in the lead up to the retreat for some inspiring ideas, thoughts and experiences;
• Retreat Report for a better look at how it all evolved!

 

The retreat provided a vibrant space to explore the role of human rights learning in social and economic transformation and how this role can be effectively realised. It was based on the premise that the real power and capacity of human rights is as a practical and actionable framework operationalised at the community level through the actions of individuals and structures of local institutions. It is in the very action of living the vision of the human rights framework as individuals, communities, nations and societies that human rights obligations are truly fulfilled. 

 

The retreat was a vibrant space for sharing and exploration. A strong shared, fundamental belief emerged from participants that transformative learning for human rights is core to catalyzing worldwide societal change -from patriarchy and oppression to respect and dignity for all. Still everyone agreed that we have a long way to go to truly engage with transformative learning as a means to cultivate a society more premised on the values of human rights and make inroads in developing strong methods that aid us in that provocative and ambitious task. While no single agenda or program emerged, participants put forward 22 projects, centred around events or thematic areas. These included:

 

• A conference on African Media and Human Rights
• Developing a human rights city in Washington DC, USA, and in Guyuna in teh Carribean
• Organising a series of dialogues at the UN, New York on Human Rights as a way of life
• Unhiding upstream practices through analysis and documentation
• Intercultural Workshop on womens’ leadership
• Campaign for the Inter-American Convention on Sexual and Reproductive Rights
• Using innovative forms of communication (art, radio, music) within and between the Human Rights Cities in Ghana 
• Community workshop on Radio as a tool for human rights

• Concert for 60th Anniversary of the UDHR

• Action-research learning Program for Human Rights Facilitators

• Model/ Process to explore, share and apply processes concerning Ghana Salt resources in Kenya

• Host a Community Radio Symposium for one day at Our Media 7 Identity, Inclusion, Innovation- Alternative Communication in a Globalised World in Ghana, 2008

• Investigate a possible paralegal program in law schools on access to justice in rural Africa – working with the Lilongwe Declaration

• Journalists for Human Rights, Speak Silence Campaign to remember the Human Rights victims who remain voiceless and to empower students across Canada to create their campaigns

• Travelling caravan of human rights learning for the 60th Anniversary of the UDHR

• Develop an ntegrated, area-wide approach to Human Rights Cities in Ghana With Ghana Community Radio Station

• To explore, trial and document transformative processes and models Transformative Processes and Learning

   

 Participants from the retreat who put themselves up for these proposals - Please share in this space ways that you have taken up these actions, or share new actions that you have developed to pursue these issues.

 

Post-Retreat

While the retreat provided space to delve a little more deeply into issues around human rights learning, much time was spent trying to find some common ground with a very diverse group of people. We realised that much more time and energy is required to reach greater understanding of this issue.

 

Following the retreat a group of 14 participants continued the dialogue online to explore how they could take up the issue of human rights learning for transformation further, using their day-day work as the basis and focus. An outline of people’s motivation, interest and ideas was synthesised. From this equalinrights developed a proposal for a 2-3 year collective process to explore innovative methodologies in human rights learning, in order to better understand whether and how these methodologies are transformative, what can make them more effective and to develop and share steps for action. However, given various challenges, including funding and time of practitioners to embark on new processes, we feel that several different entry points may be best for advancing this work. In particular this needs to be grounded in participants work and needs to start from the local and national levels.

 

Kenya in focus: Strategy Meeting to Explore Methodologies for Action

 A motivated group of Kenyan practitioners met together in mid-2008 to strategise how they could start a local process based on their human rights and development context.  Equalinrights recently worked with them to host a strategy meeting from 26-27 November 2008 to take this issue head on.

 

Nine Kenyan human rights and development practitioners gathered for a rich and vibrant two days in Nairobi to exchange and explore the power, practice and potential of transformative learning for human rights in Kenya. Based on participants own experiences, a sense of the core ingredients behind triggering a process of transformation and supporting transformation at the personal and group levels emerged. Thoughts were also shared about broader societal transformation and overcoming challenges in our current context to TLHR. Participants affirmed the need for greater solidarity, networking, and method exploration, documentation and experimentation. This would both make more explicit our understanding of TLHR and the possibilities for real transformative change, as well as to create a platform to demonstrate for broader outreach the power of transformative learning processes for human rights.

 

Action is paramount now to continue to dialogue, collaborate and strategise together, while also bringing in other actors. The group mounts a challenge to all of us to create new ways of thinking and being, and to inspire a regeneration of commitment to human life as human dignity within our work and beyond.

 

See more on the Kenya Transformative Learning for Human Rights page!

 

Resources

To view or add a report, article, video, case study, photo or any other resource that sheds some light on transformative learning for human rights, go to the Resource page.

 

Get started!!

This wiki is a space for YOU to provoke thought, share ideas, methodologies, resources and practices, dialogue together, strategise and plan actions to develop our own thinking and practice on innovative human rights learning. Lets improve the impact of our work, to really achieve the missions we are all committed to: the enjoyment of  dignity, justice and  equality for all women and men around the globe. Please start new pages on here, add resources, stories and your comments - the more creative the better!

 

 

An article for the Day of Obama's inauguration - written  by Satya Das (who advises public and private sector leadership in Canada and authored bestseller  - The Best Country: Why Canada Will Lead the Future and Dispatches from a Borderless World) in the Chicago Sun Times: Read it! 

 

... Satya's celebration and hopes of a time moving towards a culture of love ... to quote, "Not the naively utopian aspects of love my generation imbibed in drug-hazed 1960s and 1970s, but the abiding and unconditional love taught in every scripture and every faith. The love that evokes the absence of fear and the absence of want in our own lives and the lives of our intimates; the love that enables girls, boys, men and women to live together in dignity, in harmony, in community."

 

http://www.cambridgestrategies.com/A%20Canadian%27s%20tears%20of%20joy%20for%20Obama%20presidency.pdf 

 

 

 

 

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