Archive for the ‘Study Session 2012’ Category

Dear friends,

we are happy to present you the final report of the Study Session “Creating Empowered Students in Human Rights through Integral Education”, which was facilitated in cooperation with the Council of Europe in Strasbourg (France) from the 19th – 26th February 2012.

Here the link to the report: Final Report (PDF)

From the 19th till the 26th of February 2012, young and committed members of the European Coordination JECI-MIEC gathered from all over Europe in Strasbourg with one goal: to participate in the study session “Creating empowered Students in Human Rights through Integral Education”.

On Sunday evening, the halls of the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg, France were filled with a lot of different languages. Excitement was in the air as young people of different ages, educational backgrounds, languages and countries (Croatia, Poland, Greece, Cyprus, France, Belgium, Germany, Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina Spain and Portugal) mingled, using English as Lingua Franca to communicate over the langue boundaries. Their goal was to get to know the others, with whom they were to share days, rooms, coffee-breaks and, above all, their thoughts and ideas about Human Rights and how to make a difference in the education of and the fight for them.

Every day, some general input by some expert was given in the plenary. Afterwards, the plenary was always divided into smaller groups, in order discussed more in detail the distinct situations of Human Rights in the different countries and to analyze a specific topic/problem more in-depth. Afterwards, the results of the small groups were presented to the other participants in a plenary session. This gave everybody, notwithstanding their level of English, personal background etc. room to learn at their personal speed, contribute information, give their personal opinion or ask questions in a comfortable atmosphere. This way, everybody was not only able to learn about Human Rights in general, its situation all over Europe and so forth, but also to improve their English debating skills, represent their country, learn about others and strengthen the believe in a united Europe – in which all are different but equal.
One important pillar of the study session was the team-building in order to eliminate prejudices or stereotypes about other countries and their citizens and to form a strong group, ready to face together the challenges of Integral Human Rights’ Education in the XXI century. Therefore, every day some time was dedicated to games. Due to the successful team-building, during the whole week the participants continued talking about Human Rights even during breakfast, supper or dinner and in the various coffee breaks.
Work hard – play hard: After the official working program, every day the young people gathered till the early morning hours. Either during the international night, in which they introduced typical food, drinks, costumes, music, dances and idiosyncrasies of their countries or during the karaoke night, the game evening or the goodbye party.
A highlight of the week was the visit of the Council of Europe (CoE), followed by a free afternoon to discover in small transnational groups Strasbourg and to meet up again in the evening in a restaurant to enjoy the traditional dish of the region: the “tarte flambée”.
Of course, during the whole week, the spirit of the Lord was present. There was not only an opening and closing mass but every working day started and ended with a prayer, which lasted about 15 minutes.
On the final days, after having learned a lot of theoretical things about Human Rights, the European participants tried to find areas with overlapping topics in which they wanted to have a commune project to get active, afterwards. Also, they thought about how they wanted to present their organization at home the outcomes of the study session.

The week ended with a farewell-party. Till dawn, the young Europeans danced, chittered and chattered, and made already plans when and where to meet again some of the new-made friends.

(Stephanie Bendig, AKH Germany)

Dear friends,

in order to give you an impression of our JECI-MIEC Study Session “Creating Empowered Students in Human Rights through Integral Education”, which was facilitated in Cooperation with the Council of Europe in Strasbourg from the 19th-26th February 2012, we are pleased to present you a selection of photos in our Image Gallery.

At this point the preparatory team on behalf of the European Team wants to thank the Media Committee of the Study Session for taking all the pictures published here. Without the Media Committee this would not have been possible.

Sunday 19/02/2012

Today JECI-MIEC Europe launched its Study Session “Creating empowered Students in Human Rights through Integral Education” in the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg, France. In the evening almost everybody had arrived. We had our dinner, celebrated the Holy Mass to thank God for the meal He provided and then we gathered to get to know each other and to express our expectations for this Study Session. After all this, we played group building games in a spirit of joyfulness and happiness. 🙂

Monday 20/02/2012

In the morning we had the official opening of the Study Session and the introduction to the major themes of the session. Through playing games we discovered the different situations of Human Rights. Then we split into groups and we designed a newspaper cover about the realities of Human Rights all over Europe. In the night we listened to the presentations by the members of JECI-MIEC and members from other external organizations and visited their “exhibitions” in a “museum”.

Tuesday 21/02/2012

The day began with a video clip on what we mean by the term ?education? and then we discussed the field of Integral Education. Later, we were divided into groups and shared experience of Integral Education and thoughts upon the use of this kind of education in general. After two input sessions by Mourad Mahidi from the European Youth Forum and Rui Gomes, the Head of the Education and Training Division the evening programme aimed at analysing the problems and issues raised by the lecturers by the method of the “problem tree”. Right now we are launching the Multicultural Evening – a great opportunity for Intercultural Learning Experience!

Wednesday 22/02/2012

After a presentation of the “problem trees” of the previous day including possible solutions everyone was invited to join one of the following workshops related to Human Rights:

–          discrimination,

–          education as a Human Right

–          evolution of Human Rights,

–          Human Rights and human dignity,

–          Human Rights, religious freedom and interreligious dialogue.

After a mid-term evaluation and the lunch we all gathered to do a joint visit at the Council of Europe main buildings. There we received a valuable introduction from experts of the Human Rights and the CoE institutions.

After the free afternoon some of us went to the Ash-Wednesday mass jointly until we all met again at a nice restaurant where we had the typical local dish “tarte flambée”.

Thursday 23/02/2012

The day began with a morning prayer. Then we were given the European and International conventions on Human Rights and were divided into groups in order to deepen our understandings of the conventions. Later, every group was given a case from the European Court of Human Rights and was asked to identify the violated articles of the conventions and propose possible actions from the Non Governmental Organizations. In the afternoon we were asked to write what rights we felt were the most important from everything we discussed so far. Then we wrote down some problems we noticed in our home or other countries and were again put into groups to discuss possible actions to solve these problems. For the evening we had a fun and successful party.

Friday 24/02/2012

The day began with our morning prayer. After that, we learnt about what Advocacy is; we were divided once again into groups, and we started preparing ourselves to act upon Human Rights’ Advocacy. Then we had three different workshops we could attend. Those were Project Management, Human Rights Education and Media and Human Rights. In the afternoon the European Youth Foundation presented itself to us. Later we started preparing for the action part by putting all of our individual cases together and found a common ground to work upon through the method of See-Judge-Act. For the evening, we prayed to God to help the people in need and then we participated in group games.

Saturday 25/02/2012

Today was the final day of the study session “Creating empowered students on Human Rights through Integral Education”. The day began with a Holy Mass. Afterwards we presented our individual action plans and had short presentations of the CoE’s and JECI-MIEC’s future plans. After lunch we were divided into groups to talk about what we are going to bring to our national organizations and we discussed possible partnerships with other NGO’s. After a short break, we were asked to write a letter to ourselves about the impact of the study session on us and about how we imagined ourselves in one year from now. Later we had the evaluation of the whole study session and the evening prayer. The evening ended with the closing ceremony and the farewell-party.

Dear friends from the national organizations,

the European Coordination JECI-MIEC has the great pleasure to invite all the national member organizations to nominate candidates for the Study Session “Creating Empowered Students in Human Rights through Integral Education”, which will be taking place in the European Youth Centre, Strasbourg, France from 19^th – 26^th February 2012.

The Study Session is targeted to both: Secondary and University Students.

These Study Sessions are organized in collaboration with the Council of Europe and take place in the European Youth Centres in Budapest or Strasbourg regularly alternating with other typical activities of the European Coordination JECI-MIEC.

The Study Session “Creating Empowered Students in Human Rights through Integral Education” aims to empower the Students to take an active role as Human Rights educators in their own milieu by using the Integral Education.

The objectives are the following:

• to deepen the different approaches to Human Rights and the mechanisms for their protection;
• to analyze the different realities in the societies where participants are coming from and identify different forms of violation of Human Rights;
• to raise awareness of the Intercultural Dialogue and to promote Intercultural Learning among the participants;
• to understand the concept of Integral Education and its use and practice it;
• to facilitate participants to find their individual approach to the Human Rights;
• to reflect and identify the responsibilities and the key roles students have as important agents in promoting and protecting Human Rights.

Deadline for sending the participants application form: 30th December 2011. Please find enclosed the call for participants with detailed information on the Study Session as well as the application form for the participants.

Maximilian Niessen

European Coordinator

StudySession2012-ParticipantsCall

StudySession2012-ParticipantsForm