Category: News and Updates

Pratibha Dhal, The SIMA 2024 Changemaker Award Winner | Impact Story (India)

Learn More About The SIMA Changemaker Award

Congratulations to the winner of The 2024 SIMA Changemaker Award, Educator Pratibha Dhal, and her 11th Grade Students Of The Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet (Hyderabad, India): Abigayle, Aalaya, Likitha, Mihika, Veda, Sarah, Aarna, Ayaan, Srivika, Freya, Anagha, Tanvi, Rivyanshika, Aadhuna, Tanvi, and Sahruda.

Prizes for Pratibha Dhal and her students include school-wide access to SIMA Academy, Student Certificates from SIMA and the Global Citizenship Foundation, a SIMA mentorship session about the power of purpose, authenticity and impact storytelling, and a scholarship towards a GEEO teacher travel program.

Inspired by the SIMA Academy films: Heal Paradise and Vibrations, a group of students visited the Devnar Blind School, initially aiming to contribute storybooks to their library. However, they discovered that the institution, also a degree college, already had a vast collection of 3,000+ books, from Upanishads to Harry Potter.

The school highlighted a greater need: audio recordings of Teachers’ Training Manuals (DSc special D.Ed), which lacked audio support. This posed challenges for visually impaired students preparing for the TET exams, crucial for teacher recruitment. Guided by the school supervisor, the students created 3-minute audio clips for each portion of the manual, recorded in noise-free environments. The manual’s 780 pages were divided among students across sections. This initiative produced one of the first-ever audio books for DSc, aiding visually impaired candidates in preparing for government teaching exams. Through this meaningful project, the students are directly contributing to empowering future educators.

The screening of the film Brighter in the classroom brought up a discussion on the prospect of the fashion industry and the by-products as well. Fueled by the post screening discussion, students organized an innovative sustainable fashion show. They creatively used various materials readily available around them, such as fabric pieces like sarees, chunnis, and gowns, along with waste items like garbage bags, bottles, used pens, and old canvas pieces. The teachers participated as models, showcasing a fashion walk inspired by the theme of Greek goddesses.

After watching IFINE, students started regular discussions on the topic of beauty. The movie was an eye opener for them as they were shocked to realize how far someone can go to get or feel beautiful. Students explore the idea of using natural organic products instead of chemically based soaps and creams even toothpaste. They are creating a counseling counter in the school infirmary where any child can just walk and get organic care products for acne, pimples. Some students from junior classes also spoke how and what they felt when their seniors spoke about the BEAUTY concept raising awareness about the importance of good health and a physically fit body and inner beauty. A Poster campaign is coming up in January.

We are pleased to announce the availability of our latest installment of podcast episodes in Human Rights Education NOW! Episodes 44 & 45 feature conversations with Susan Roberta Katz. Susan Roberta Katz is Professor Emerita of International & Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco, where she taught for 27 years and co-founded the graduate program in Human Rights Education in 2008. A former San Francisco public middle school teacher, she received her Ph.D. in Education in Language & Literacy at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education. Since 2010, she has participated in collaborative research and educational projects with Indigenous communities in both Ecuador and Colombia. Her co-edited book, Bringing Human Rights Education to U.S. Classrooms: Exemplary Models from Elementary Grades through University, was published by Palgrave McMillan in Spring 2015.

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The 2024 winners of HRE USA’s Youth in Action for Human Rights Awards have just been announced. The individual award goes to Pranav Raju, from Irving, TX, in recognition of his outstanding advocacy for affordable healthcare, especially on behalf of persons living with Type 1 Diabetes. Outside Connection, founded by Sebastian Tan of Sewickley, PA, was named the organizational winner for its innovative advocacy on behalf of formerly incarcerated individuals. Emily Peng of San Mateo, CA was recognized with Honorable Mention. 

Pranav Raju

Sebastian Tan

Read more about the 2024 winners and past youth awards winners.

To encourage a new generation of human rights activists, the Youth in Action for Human Rights Awards recognize youth leadership in the defense of and advocacy for human rights in the United States. The Awards annually honor the work of both an individual and a group of young people of high school age. This year’s winners will receive a $500 award and be recognized at HRE USA’s national Human Rights Day Celebration on Tuesday, December 10, at 4:00 ET. Register for the virtual Human Rights Day celebration here.

HRE USA is proud to honor these young activists for their dedication to defending human rights and creating change in society as well as the lives of individuals in their community.

The 2024 winners of HRE USA’s O’Brien Awards have just been announced. For his decades of commitment and service to human rights education in the United States, Dr. Rick Halperin, Director of the Southern Methodist University Human Rights Program, is honored as the individual winner. The organizational winner is the Academy for Human Rights of Buffalo, NY, which has provided human rights education for teachers, students and community members since 2008.

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Applications are now open for the United Nations Immersion Programme, a 5-day field visit to Geneva organized by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in May, July and August 2025. Scholarships are available.

The field visit includes activities with the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other Geneva-based institutions.

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On Monday, December 2, 2024, scholar Orisanmi Burton and Teaching for Black Lives co-editor Jesse Hagopian will discuss Burton’s book, Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt, which argues that prisons are a domain of hidden warfare within U.S. borders.

A fresh and urgent interpretation of the meaning of Attica. . . . Burton has crafted a masterpiece that, as much as any single book can, shows the way forward for a new generation of activist-scholars, agitators, revolutionaries, and other partisans of human liberation, to redeem the dead and build a new society in their name. — Los Angeles Review of Books

Tip of the Spear transforms our understanding of prison rebellion. In so doing, the book offers a stunning contribution to Black radical thought and abolitionist scholarship and politics. Exquisitely researched and argued, this is a must-read. — Sarah Haley, author of No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity

In this meticulously researched and beautifully written book, Burton presents one of the most dynamic accounts of Black revolutionary struggle against the prison industrial complex to date. Burton centers Black radical action as the hub of knowledge production to explain the function, implementation, and logic of the carceral apparatus over the past fifty years. Powerfully arguing against the ill-conceived notion of Black revolt as spontaneous and state violence as the happenstance of misguided policy, Burton carefully takes the reader through a rigorously developed source map to understand the breadth and depth of prisons within the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With a brilliant array of methodological, conceptual, and theoretical interventions, Tip of the Spear is a must-read and is fundamental to the study of prisons and movements against prisons. — Damien Sojoyner, author of Joy and Pain: A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums

Learn more about the book from an interview with the author in Truthout, Attica Was More Than a Riot. It Offered a Framework for Revolutionary Struggle.

Orisanmi Burton is assistant professor of anthropology at American University. His research examines the imbrication of grassroots resistance and state repression and explores the collision of Black-led movements for social, political, and economic transformation with state infrastructures of militarized policing, surveillance, and imprisonment.

ASL interpretation provided.

Professional development credit certificate provided upon request for attendees.

These online classes with people’s historians are held at least once a month (generally on Mondays) at 4:00 pm PT / 7:00 pm ET for 75 minutes. In each session, the historian is interviewed by a teacher and breakout rooms allow participants to meet each other in small groups, discuss the content, and share teaching ideas. We designed the sessions for teachers and other school staff. Parents, students, and others are also welcome to participate.