H.R. Edu Services

Human Rights training and Networking for Trainers

Nicosia, 13 November 2004

The Trainers’ Training Seminar was intended to empower persons from all communities, working on the Human Rights from different perspectives.

There were sixteen participants, representing several viewpoints, such as education, issues of migrants and refugees, people with disabilities, environmental protection, youth organizations, women’s organizations.

The introduction by Niki Roubani presented the issue from the point of empowerment and articulation of the personal and collective identity, as well as connecting empowerment and self- perception to values and behaviors.

Moreover, the need was stressed for building a Civil Society not just at horizontal levels of cooperation, i.e. teachers meeting teachers, youth meeting youth, but for substantial as well as strategic reasons, also vertically, in terms of policy making levels, bringing together of people with similar pursuits but from different backgrounds, experiences, perceptions.

This happens for the empowerment of people (trainers/ multipliers) as well as for the articulation of proposed policies.

The interactive training and the discussions that followed were related:

• To the exchange of information on activities of organizations and people
• To the exchange of perceptions and experience concerning the special interests and motivations
• To the perception of our personal difference as well as our cultural one, as enriching qualities,
• While at the same time practicing skills: active listening, presentation skills of people and issues, lobbying and the dissemination of ideas (lobbying people and lobbying for policies), networking practices, the use of healing tools, especially those involving the Arts, so that personal creativity may positively affect their visionary personal democratic involvement, (The Art for Diversity program was introduced),
• There were activities aiming to enable the human body to gain non-competitive conscience of balance and strength, thus increasing personal confidence as well as solidarity and interdependence.
• There were activities, finally, on conflict management and peaceful confrontation.

The seminar was concluded with evaluation of the day and discussions on possible cooperation.