National Training Course on Human Rights Education in Spain
From 6-10 July 2020 FAGiC (the Federation of Roma Associations in Catalonia) together with Plataforma Khetané organized a National Training Course on Human Rights Education funded by the Youth Department of the Council of Europe.
The NTC “Training4Roma, Human Rights Training for Roma and non Roma youth activists” was held in the Library Font de La Mina, in the La Mina neighbourhood of Barcelona. The course targeted Roma and non Roma youth from different backgrounds who work with other young people to become multipliers of Human Rights education.
From the first moment, the environment was very good among the 13 participants willing to learn more and from each other. 4 young Roma participants were from the La Mina neighbourhood itself, stigmatized in the media as a “dangerous” place and criminalising the Roma inhabitants as potential drug traffickers.
In this way, the 4 young Roma students broke with the stereotypes not only of Roma, but also of the neighbourhood. Asked by the non-Roma participants, we organised a “guided tour” of the neighbourhood, explaining the historical construction from the exclusion perspective and how this has affected to the lives of the people living there.
The NTC was based on the COMPASS manual on Human Rights Education of the Council of Europe and also targeted Antigypsyism from the perspective of Human Rights. The training consisted of 3 parts:
- Introduction to the topic of Human Rights through activities and methods from the manual and by sharing participants’ experiences. Following on, we went deeper into the topic of Antigypsyism and how to develop educational responses to it.
- Providing space and time to participants to develop their facilitation skills. Participants did not only use activities from Mirrors or Compass, they also adapted them perfectly to the situation and to the goal they really wanted to achieve.
- Evaluation and planning concrete follow-up activities
During the training, we received the visits from OND (Oficina per a la NO Discriminació) – Non Discrimination Office from the Council of Barcelona, from Catalan Human Rights Institute and also some local Roma initiatives fighting for Human Rights.
We thank the Municipality of Sant Adrià del Besòs, to which the neighbourhood belongs, for letting us use the whole library space in this difficult time due to Covid 19.