TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Robbie Stakelum
Homelessness is the end result of a gross infringements human rights (access to education, housing, health, employment, quality of life etc) however most social workers in Europe are never taught about human rights.
At the international level homelessness has been positioned as a human rights issue, however on the ground social workers have little understanding of how to use human rights in their work.
This training aimed to teach social workers in the homelessness sector about human rights and how to integrate human rights into their work.
Participants on this training worked for homeless services from across EU & CoE member states. They worked in frontline services directly with young people experiencing homelessness, worked on policy or research around youth homelessness.
They had no baseline understanding of human rights.
Acting Out Human Rights:
We broke participants up into small groups of 4-6 people. They were each tasked to come up with a mime (play with no words, only acted out) that could summarise what human rights are. They can use different props etc to help demonstrate. We gave each of the participants about 20 minutes to discuss what human rights meant to them, followed by another 20 minutes to plan out a mime and rehearsal. After each group performed we debriefed on the key learning, what was new to them, were their common areas, areas of disagreement etc. This exercise helped to collect the existing understanding of Human Rights and identify areas to develop during the week.
Walking Debate:
Human rights can run contrary to how many homeless services are run, particularly older services. To challenge these systems which many participants worked in, in a respectful manner we designed a walking debate, to put gradually more complicated questions to the group. Depending on how much they agreed or disagreed with the statement they moved to the left or right of the room. Participants then discussed their positions, and shared perspectives on human rights operated within their services.
Newspaper Briefings:
To capture their key learning from the week, on Day 5, participants were given old newspapers and magazines and then had to design a newspaper front page which captured their key learning and what needs to change in their organisation or system to promote human rights.
Role Plays:
When participants had developed their understanding of human rights and international human rights frameworks they used role plays to develop their competency talking about human rights and homelessness to various stakeholders including their peers, boss, management, funders and people experiencing homelessness.
The full study session report is available here:
https://rm.coe.int/2019-feantsa-studysession-report/168093bc54
The participants put together a video for human rights day, calling attention to the criminalisation of homelessness in Hungary (the host country). Video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmy8vTs3j6Q
Having learned about strategic litigation during the week's proceedings, Czech Republic, Ireland & Belgium started the procedure for submitting collective complaints to the Committee of Social Rights. The Czech Republic complaint has been submitted, while the Irish & Belgian complaint is still being drafted.
https://www.coe.int/en/web/european-social-charter/pending-complaints/-/asset_publisher/lf8ufoBY2Thr/content/no-191-2020-european-federation-of-national-organisations-working-with-the-homeless-feantsa-v-czech-republic?inheritRedirect=false&redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.coe.int%2Fen%2Fweb%2Feuropean-social-charter%2Fpending-complaints%3Fp_p_id%3D101_INSTANCE_lf8ufoBY2Thr%26p_p_lifecycle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26p_p_col_id%3Dcolumn-4%26p_p_col_count%3D1
I was the Course Director. I recruited a the 5 member prep team. Coordinated our meetings and worked with an educational advisor to support translating our ideas and concepts into a 5 day course.
With the support of the prep team I designed the call for applicants, designed the application and evaluation system and worked with the prep team to select the participants and managed the logistics and admin.
As Course Director I managed the team morale, addressing any conflict & ensuring the course was delivered in an engaging way.