Meliora NGO|Meliora Cultural Charity Youth Non-Governmental Organization.

This project will help students understand the idea of human rights, gain a sense of themselves as people with dignity and hence with rights, and finally encourage them to act.

The main focus of the project is action: your students in action.The project hopes to demonstrate that young people around the world are active in and concerned about their world; that the notion of rights has relevance everywhere in the world; and that young students can, indeed, make a difference. By bringing together the stories of student action, the project hopes to create a resource that will provide concrete examples to emulate and will inspire new and original actions.

The teaching materials provided give students a way into understanding human rights in general and the Universal Declaration in particular. The teaching materials can be used as a basis for the other activities.

1. The project starts with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a document;
2. It expands the discussion to the notion of human rights in general;
3. It gets into specifics about rights in your community and how they came about;
4. Finally, it ends with what you and your students could be or are doing for human rights.

The project will be carried out both through e-mail and the World Wide Web. It is up to the teacher to decide which activities to focus on. However, keep in mind that if you want to submit questions from your class to experts or if you want to submit a report to be included in the final global atlas of student actions, you must submit student reports by the deadlines and according to the guidelines.

The project consists of ‘static resources’, or documents that are on the web, and ‘real-time activities’, such as question-and-answer sessions and the student action reports.
The steps…
As mentioned above, these activities are designed to build an in- depth understanding of human rights. However, each step can be an independent activity.
Step I
What is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

• Read the text of the Declaration.
• Discuss: What is this document? What is a Declaration? Who wrote it? Who signed it? Where did they sign it? Where is it? What is done with it?
• Activity: Each student can pick one of 30 articles to read out loud. You can refer to our student FAQ or the official FAQ for more answers.

Step II
What are Human Rights?

• Article 1 of the Declaration sets the stage. It introduces the words dignity, justice and equality.
• Discuss: What do these three words signify in your own lives? How are they related? What is a human right? What is not a human right? Do we have them naturally, just as we have toes and eyes? What is universal about them? What are our responsibilities towards our rights? Is it the same as our responsiblities towards the rights of others? How can we make sure our rights are respected?
• Activity: Discuss these issues and send your questions to us to be answered by our panel of experts.

Step III
Teaching the Universal Declaration

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the principle document enshrining the rights of humankind around the world. The Interactive Declaration, produced for this project, is for educators and students. Each article is discussed and a classroom activity is proposed for each. There is a subject index which allows you to find articles related to specific issues such as women’s rights or labour rights. A “plain language” version of each article along with a glossary complete the Interactive Declaration.
• Activity: As mentioned, each article in the Interactive Declaration has an a

• activity related to it.
  1. Focus on one or a few articles in depth by:
     1. choosing an issue (say, racial discrimination or refugees or freedom of speech),
     2. finding the related article through the subject index,
     3. carrying out the activities suggested under those articles in the Interactive Declaration,
     4. carrying out the activity: Human Rights in Action, Part 1.
  2. Go through 10 or 20 of the articles in the Interactive Declaration, by doing one activity a day or a week for a period of time. This can be made fun by putting numbers in a hat and having students pick an article randomly.

Hints

• In classroom discussions and assignments, use examples of real people and historical situations in which rights were at stake.
• Both local and international media carry stories related to human rights; identify them and relate them to an article of the Universal Declaration.
• Relate the issue of human rights, and its principles, to classroom and school situations.
• Remember, human rights is not only a topic to teach but a way to teach. Encourage your students to participate in setting the rules, guidelines, and scope of classroom discussions and activities.