Developing Educational Resources to Roll Out the Change-Makers Youth Leadership Programme Across Africa
This Project, in partnership with Leeds University, The Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Center (JHGC) and Salzburg Global Seminar, builds upon the case studies developed for Contested Histories and translates them into a suite of educational materials used within the JHGC Changemaker Programme (CMP). The CMP is an established programme that draws on historical case studies (e.g. the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda) to develop leadership skills, democratic values, and resilience amongst young people in a range of African countries.
This new project aims to implement the recommendations of that evaluation as the JHGC continues to roll out the Change-Makers programme beyond South Africa to other post-conflict African countries. First, there is a need to build a larger bank of case studies of historical trauma (beyond the Holocaust and apartheid) that can resonate around Africa. Second, there is a need to connect educators working on Change-Makers in Africa to colleagues around the world to both build their understanding of the global contexts of human rights education and to integrate African case studies—and African learning—into the global debate on using the historical past for building more resilient societies. To achieve this ambition, the project involves two new partners: The Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation (IHJR, Netherlands) and the Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS, Austria).
Dr Stuart Taberner (University of Leeds) and the project postdoctoral fellow Maria Ambozy have worked with the IHJR and EuroClio to develop new case studies from our case study database, focussing especially on examples from around Africa (e.g. Rwanda, Namibia, Nigeria, etc.). These new case studies will be developed into online, downloadable materials for ‘train the trainer’ workshops, in close collaboration with educators at the JHGC engaged in the current Change-Makers programme and in the roll-out of the programme across Africa.
Finally, we are working with Salzburg Global Seminar to organise an African event (using the SGS’s convening power) to bring key partners from the roll-out of Change-Makers across the continent together with the IHJR’s case-studies authors. This workshop will deepen global understanding of the work being done across Africa and also better integrate African partners into the global human rights education discourse. The outcomes of the project will include:
1. A suite of online materials that can be used in ‘train the trainer’ workshops for the Change-Makers programme as it rolls out across Africa;
2. Capacity building in Africa on human rights education;
3. Capacity building amongst the global human rights education community as they learn from African examples;
4. Training and career development for educators at the JHGC and for the postdoctoral fellow.
The results of the Project will be published in early 2023.