Building Bridges Statement

The Toolkit was designed to collect and share the know-how on voluntary projects involving people seeking or who have recently found refuge, as well as raising awareness on forced migration in general. The collection of guidelines, methods and case studies is non-exhaustive and should simply foster your own inspiration and support you in implementing projects on the topic. The creation of the Toolkit has been driven by the ever bigger need of the international SCI network to exchange best practices on projects in the field. It was coordinated by SCI Switzerland with the support of Útilapu Hungary. Its existence wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the Mercator Foundation Switzerland and the active contribution of the Building Bridges working group and a number of SCI branches.

METHODS AND TOOLS serve to support your work on the topic of refugees and migration with different target groups.

SOCIAL RIGHT IN AN ENVELOPE

Human Rights and Social Justice

Time needed: 60 min 

Objectives / aim: Raising awareness about access to social human rights for vulnerable groups in the society. 

Level of Difficulty: Easy

Resources needed: Paper, markers, envelopes, colored paper, scissors, tape, photos

Number of participants: max 20 (or split the group)

Description
This game aims at providing space for participants to reflect on social rights and their accessibility to all social groups. The objective is to introduce the difference between concepts of equality and equity.

Steps:
1. Introduction [10 min]
The facilitator begins a short brainstorming session on human rights, in order to ensure an equal level of understanding of the term for participants. He/she writes the brainstormed terms on a flipchart, and circles the ones which are social rights.

2. Group work: Creation [10 min]
Participants are divided into four small groups. They receive a photo of a person glued on the top of a flipchart with the following instruction: to make up their own story about the person through discussion based on the photo (ex. Who is the person, what age is he/she, what are his/hers interests, personal background). They write down this story on the flipchart. While the groups are making the stories, facilitators arrange the room sticking an envelope in four different corners of the room and setting five chairs for the participants around it. In each of the envelopes there is one social right written on a paper:
1) Right to education
2) Right to health services
3) Right of non-discrimination
4) Right of housing

3. Group work: exploration [20min]
When groups finish the first task, the facilitator sends each of the group in a corner to continue writing the story with the instruction to discuss how ‘their’ person enjoys the social right in that envelope (ex. Are there any obstacles the person is facing towards enjoying this right, any specific opportunities connected to this right etc.). Five minutes later each group receives one statement containing an obstacle that the person they received faced on the way to accessing a certain social right.
Examples on statements to use:
– The person has immigrated illegally in their current place of living because of a war conflict in his origin country.
– The person was forced to follow education in a language he/she does not understand.
– The person is a gender equality activist often being bullied because of his sexual orientation.
– The person is avoided and ignored by the community it becomes known that he/she has AIDS.

Every five minutes, groups move to the next corner in a clockwise direction, continuing to fill the profile of the person on the photo in the flipchart.

4. Presenting work to the group: [10 min]
After each group has visited every corner they all introduce their character to the other participants.

5. Discussion [20 min]
The facilitator urges participants to reflect on social rights and their accessibility to vulnerable social groups, as well as introducing the terms of equality and equity and how they differ.

6. Evaluation
The facilitator asks the participants to express their thoughts and share how they feel about how accessible social rights truly are in their societies when it comes to less privileged social groups.

Tips:

  • Definitions on human rights and social rights can be found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Revised European Social Chapter   
  • Make sure that the provided photos contain many details and allow participants to form a story around them.

Links:

CONTRIBUTE!

You can share your experience, observations, tips and tricks, pictures etc. by uploading for instance a method or a case study to the Building Bridges Toolkit. As this Toolkit is a work in progress to which all involved parties are invited to contribute, we would also be very grateful for your support and contribution in order to inspire others to continue the work towards peace and intercultural understanding.