Segment 1: Youth for Human Rights International. http://www.youthforhumanrights.org/
Our guest on this edition of The Doug Noll Show is Tim Bowles, Director of International Development for Youth for Human Rights International. Tim practiced constitutional and civil rights law for over 30 years and helped establish valuable protections for free religious practice in American that continue to benefit individuals from all faiths and walks of life. After three decades of litigation work in the American courts, Tim traveled to Ghana, West Africa as a volunteer for Youth for Human Rights International (YFHRI), a U.S. based nonprofit dedicated to human rights education worldwide. In Africa Tim helped teach young people their human rights as embodied in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. He also met people who shared his vision of bringing increased awareness to the subject of human rights.
Segment 2: Human Rights Education in West Africa.
The YFHRI organization is centered around human rights education and raising the awareness and responsibility levels of youth throughout the world. They conduct international summits around the globe. Tim believes we need to not only teach the existence of human rights, but also make it a reality. His passion is leadership training: planting the seeds that will enable the younger generation. Our young people need to know it is their responsibility to be more confident, more courageous, more creative and more effective than their parents’ generation.
So how do kids in West Africa respond when tasked with spreading human rights principals? Tim has found that kids are wide open to ideas. They’ve seen enough killing --- they have personal experience with murder, rape and other tragedies. The youth that Tim worked with generally had three complaints: a lack of power structure; the NGOs did not go into the side streets and look for opportunities; and they wanted to teach their peers about human rights but did not have the training or support to do so.
Segment 3: Youth Coalition Teams.
After some initial trial and error, YFHRI decided to engage wide groups of young people and mix up the youth in the schools. They organized them into “coalition teams” and everyone had a leadership role and a sub-product or result to work toward. Each team’s task was to create a human rights campaign on a selected issue that created support for human rights education within the student population, civil society, urban leadership, educators and the broader society around them. The teams chose their own issues and were given training and support by YFHRI. They came together at the end of the cycle and shared their phenomenal campaign ideas and results.
Segment 4: The Foundation for All Learning.
Unfortunately, we are not exposed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in primary, middle school or high school. Tim believes it’s fundamental and that we need to bring this subject to the attention of policy makers. This should be a subject in of itself. It’s the foundation for all learning. It gives learning a context and a purpose, and many professions stem from human right education.
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