Category: News and Updates

November 11 at 1 p.m. ET

A longtime advocate for immigrant, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ communities, Arely Westley works with numerous organizations in New Orleans to uplift LGBTQ+ youth, stop abuses in ICE detention facilities, and expand access to immigrant support services. Westley was recognized as this year’s RFK Human Rights Award for her tireless efforts to combat injustice and speak truth to power.

Register here for the panel and receive accompanying lesson materials.

Sponsored by Citizens for Global Solutions, Minnesota

Date: Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Time: 7:00 – 8:00 PM (Central Time – USA)
Where: Zoom Webinar (register at link below)
Cost: FREE and open to the public

Register in advance: https://www.globalsolutionsmn.org/upcomingevents   

After registering you will receive the Zoom link in your email address.

Join us for an insightful event featuring Mr. Hanson as he discusses the pressing global challenges in this election year and how they impact the upcoming elections in November. Learn about key international events shaping the political landscape and their significance for voters and policymakers alike.

Thomas Hanson is a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer with the Department of State whose diplomatic postings included East Germany, France, Norway, the Soviet Union, Sweden, and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. He also participated in the opening of new U.S. embassies in Mongolia and Estonia, worked on the Foreign Relations Committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and served as Director for NATO and European Affairs at the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Hanson currently is Diplomat in Residence at the Alworth Institute for International Affairs at the University of Minnesota – Duluth and teaches diplomacy at Carleton College. He serves as Chair of the Minnesota Committee on Foreign Relations and as Co-Chair of the Minnesota International Business Council. He is a past board member of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights and Director at the Institute for Eastern Europe and Central Asia (IEECA). He is also a member of the U.S. Foreign Policy Working Group of the British International Studies Association (BISA) as well as the Council of Advisers at the Museum of Russian Art and the Minnesota Peace Initiative (MPI) at Norway House.

Mr. Hanson holds a BA degree from the University of Minnesota and graduate degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy; the Institute of Advanced International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland; and the national School of Administration (ENA) in Paris, France.

Join the Teach Climate Network and presenter Marie Fargo on Wednesday, October 16th at 12:00pm CT for a workshop covering key practices for early elementary climate change education.

Register for the Webinar!

Do you want to address climate change with your elementary students, but don’t know where to begin? Are you concerned that climate change may overwhelm or scare your students? Then this workshop is a good place to start! We will discuss key practices for early elementary climate change education and introduce Climate Generation’s new resources for grades K-2, Healthy Habitats and Food Solutions. You will leave with more confidence to teach about climate change with your elementary students, and knowledge of two standards-supported resources to get you started! This workshop will apply best to formal or non-formal educators working with K-2 students, but preschool and 3rd grade educators may also find it applicable. We encourage you to download the Healthy Habitats and Food Solutions resources before the session to familiarize yourself with the content! 

We understand that some of these workshops do not work for educator’s schedules, so all registrants will receive a recording and additional resources to their e-mail within 1 week of the event. We are striving to make our events more welcoming to all, with specific goals about racial equity and inclusivity. Your answers during registration will help us to know how we are doing. The workshop will be from 12:00-1:00pm CT.

Please join us for a one-hour webinar, Child Labor Exploitation: What Caring Adults Need to Know this Wednesday. Register here!

October 9, 2024 05:00 PM CT

The Albert Shanker Institute and AFT are partnering to host a back-to-school season event for educators, health care professionals, and other caring adults on child labor laws and possible warning signs of child labor infractions. We will be joined by the Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division.

Educators and health care professionals see young people often in their professional settings. When are student/patient behaviors like, sleepiness or absenteeism, signs of a child being exploited in the workplace and what should educators and health care professionals do about it?

Additionally, state legislatures have been enacting changes to loosen child labor laws at the same time they are introducing vouchers, which contributes to an environment where children are more vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace.

With evidence of child labor violations on the rise and many states loosening state child labor laws and expanding vouchers, more children than ever are vulnerable to child labor exploitation. Following the widely read New York Times investigative story, Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S., more adults are learning about the perils of child labor and want to do something about it.

This webinar will provide participants with background information on child labor laws, where to find additional resources and support for children and their families, and examples of union-community partnerships to end child labor exploitation.

Featured Speakers include:

Randi Weingarten, President AFT and Albert Shanker Institute
Jessica Looman, Administrator, Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Department of Labor
David Weil, Professor, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University 
Kent Wong, Project Director for Labor and Community Partnerships, UCLA Labor Center
Jack Kearns, UCLA Labor Center.

November 14 at 1 p.m. ET—RFKHR Book Club—The Movement, by Clara Bingham: On the next installment of our RFKHR Book Club, author Clara Bingham will discuss her latest book, The Movement. Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, The Movement tells the intimate inside story of what it felt like to be at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade. We hope you’ll join us for the discussion!

Teaching for Change is pleased to announce the release this month of the second edition of Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching. The Civil Rights Movement is one of the most commonly taught stories about the fight for democracy and equal rights. However, the powerful stories of everyday people organizing and working together for social change are lost in the focus on a few major heroes and dates.

Our book and companion website offer free lessons and other resources to teach a people’s history of the Civil Rights Movement.

As co-editor Jenice L. View says in the book’s introduction:

We have published this new print and online edition to challenge the typical story of the Civil Rights Movement, which, in the name of honoring Black history, is actually a disempowering narrative. By moving beyond “heroes and holidays,” we uncover and humanize the stories of all the many ordinary people who performed heroic acts in the name of social justice, and at the local level as well as nationally.
In doing so, readers are able to learn useful lessons about their roles in this world, to develop strategies to address pressing problems in their lives and community, and to see themselves as agents of change.

In honor of our 35th anniversary, we offer you a pre-order discount of $7 with the code TFC35. The books will ship by mid-October.Pre-Order Book

This book comes at a time when we need young people to learn from history how to defend voting rights and to organize to address a myriad of burning issues, including climate justice, mass incarceration, war, the freedom to learn, and much more.

The UN Human Rights Council has issued a public call for inputs to prepare the report Ensuring quality education for peace and tolerance for every child (res. 54/5).

The purpose is to inform the UN Human Rights Office’s report on how to develop accessible, inclusive, equitable and quality education for peace and tolerance for every child, especially children in the most vulnerable situations, and how to incorporate it into educational programs. This report will be presented at the 59th session of the Human Rights Council in June/July 2025.

Input/comments may be sent by e-mail/fax/postal mail. They must be received by 8 November 2024 18:00 CET. Please click here for further details.

The Kemper Human Rights Education Foundation (khref.org) is offering prizes of $4000, $2000, and $1000 to high school students judged to have written the best answers to the question below.  There are two contests and two sets of prizes: one for high school students in the U.S. and one for high school students who are citizens and residents of other countries.

Click here for more information.

QUESTION

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.  Yet António Gueterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, has identified hate speech as a formidable threat to human rights.   Do you agree and if so, how do you think governments should deal with that threat?  If you disagree explain the reason you disagree.

CRITERIA

Essays will be judged according to how clearly and well they answer the question posed and the extent to which they are supported by research.  They are due on or before December 10, 2024 (Human Rights Day) and should:

 1. Be written in English. 

2. Be 2500 words or less (not including the footnotes and bibliography) in length.  

3.  Be submitted as a Microsoft Word attachment to: kemperhumanrights@gmail.com or by regular mail to: KHREF, 184 Fillow Street, Norwalk, CT 06850, USA.  

4. Via footnotes and a bibliography indicate the names, titles, year of publication, and page numbers for all references on which it is based.

5. Include a cover page with:  i. the title, ii. author’s name and grade level, iii. name and address of author’s high school, iv.  name of a teacher at the high school, v. the following statement signed by the teacher: “I [teacher’s name], a teacher of [subject] at [name of the essay author’s school] am aware of [author’s name] participation in the KHREF essay contest and to the best of my knowledge the essay [s/he] submitted represents [her/his] independent work, vi. the following statement signed by the essay’s author:   My essay is based on the research cited in its footnotes and bibliography and represents my own thoughts on the subject and prior to receiving a prize I agree to participate in a Zoom interview with members of KHREF’s board regarding my essay and, vii. the following statement signed by the essay’s author and essay author’s parent or guardian: “I give the Kemper Human Rights Education Foundation permission to publish this essay.”