Dear Society, An Introduction of What’s to Come.

This summer, GenHR welcomed some really enthusiastic and self-motivated college students into its newly renamed and restructured Summer Fellowship Program

Teaching students about human rights so they could imagine a world without human rights abuses?

With the holidays come many expectations related to tradition, which for the most part were not met this year due to the coronavirus crisis and soaring cases in many countries. This brought about increased restrictions regarding social distancing which is very unusual for this usually very social time of the year.

Living through a pandemic is tough. Being a university student through a pandemic is tough. Being a university student in a foreign country through a pandemic is tough. “Make the most out of your university experience,” they said. “Go out. Work hard. Make mistakes. This is how you will make the best memories. These will be the best years of your life.” These last few words have been wandering through my mind for the past couple of weeks, and increasingly so as England announced a second lockdown a few days ago.

I am French, from Paris, and study in the United Kingdom at the University of Warwick: I am a final year Politics and International Studies undergraduate student. Being at university during the pandemic will be a lot different than other years: all of our lectures are being held online as well as some of our smaller classes, no conferences, parties or other events…

This blog post is a reflection of our three summer interns, Shawna, Charlotte and Hana, on their work at GenHR. They talk about the research they did for the Pandemic Curriculum and how they adapted to remote work. Their work has been so precious to us and rewarding as our Pandemic Curriculum is now up and running on our website!

Having participated in programs run by Generation Human Rights back in high school, the organization played an integral role in shaping my passions. As a sophomore in college, I decided I’d like to share powerful the experience of GenHR through the Telling History Project. With a student group we began the Telling History Project at Johns Hopkins University and began working with local high schools in Baltimore.

I am Elana Haviv, the founder and Executive Director of Generation Human Rights (formerly the Children’s Movement for Creative Education). It is an exciting time for Generation Human Rights as we re-establish ourselves in New York City and work to bring a new and innovative human rights curriculum to high schools nationwide.

It was 2003; the second war in Iraq had begun and the airwaves were filled with gruesome details of war and battles. Sitting in a classroom chair, with second graders grouped cross-legged about me, I asked:
“What country have you been hearing about in the news?”