Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) isa non-profit organization formed in 2001 by Dr. Mary Shuttleworth. After living through apartheid in South Africa, and being exposed to glaring discrimination and a lack of human rights, she came up with the idea of founding an organization with the purpose of educating the youth on the importance of human rights. The “purpose” section of their website outlines their belief that children are the future, and it is thus important to teach them about human rights, and how to protect themselves and others, from an early age so as to instill such values during development.

This organization uses multiple materials in its lessons, such as a multitude of short videos that outline each of the 30 articles of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as booklets summarizing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in an easy to understand manner. Personally, I believe that this package of information would be great for a week of lessons (or less), as the material doesn’t go into a crazy amount of depth, but still covers everything that it needs to within multiple short, easy to understand lessons. It’s hard to incorporate the teaching of human rights into a normal curriculum, but including these within a week’s worth of social studies classes could be beneficial towards teaching children about human rights, and how to uphold them, from an early age, and can benefit them and their communities largely in the long run in exchange for only a small amount of their time.

Check out the website here! https://www.youthforhumanrights.org/about-us.html

Thanks for reading!

Luke Leonard