Pambazuka; A Guide To Participatory Learning For Human Rights

Abstract

Pambazuka is a training guide that contains a set of learning activities that human rights defenders working with communities in Kenya can use to facilitate the development of knowledge, skills and attitudes aimed at developing sustained actions for human rights in their communities. Its aim is to provide human rights defenders with basic tools for facilitating learning processes that enable communities to identify the need for organisation for positive social change. It provides guidelines for human rights defenders to I facilitate an effective human rights education campaign as a basis for collective community action. The inspiration of Pambazuka is derived from the global Human Rights Education Movement that proclaims that everybody has a right to Human Rights Education. Human Rights Education is about education for dignified living. Opportunities to learn about our human rights should therefore be availed to all in the community. Pambazuka presents opportunities through which learning about human rights can be incorporated into our daily activities. This learning can be a part of what we do in places of worship, travel, and learning and working institutions. It is about what we eat and wear, where and how we live, I our families and neighbours, our property, security and health. It is about us and we can attain it and make others attain it. Pambazuka is by no means a prescription. Claiming thus would be dictatorial, which Pambazuka works to defeat. Pambazuka is not a formula. Rather, it is a presentation of $ suggestions that would help stir interest among community members to analyse their lifesituations, through a well-facilitated process of education and collective actions leading to a total defeat of life-situations that threaten their right to dignity as human beings. The vision of this process is a Kenyan people who have the effective power to determine, direct and control their destiny and not slaves of systems of domination and abuse. Users of Pambazuka are therefore free to adapt these suggestions to suit their situations and those of learners.