Pauline's weekend was engaging, reflective, draining and inspiring

I want to start off by saying that the Human Rights Training Weekend for Social Cohesion was very engaging, reflective, draining and inspiring. As I grappled with understanding the importance of some activities, it was apparent that each had a purpose no matter what that purpose was. As I mentioned in the evaluation form, I think that the Asylum Application that highlighted language barrier as well as the connecting the dots exercise were my two favorite. Very rarely do I ever take into consideration the many challenges immigrants face when going through the process of trying to get into another country and I definitely never even consider that they may not understand the language of the application because I thought there was no way that not understanding the language on an application could be why many get denied. 

As Vincent also reinforced the idea of thinking outside of the box, it was only evident that I literally hadn’t been thinking outside of the box when I couldn’t draw 4 straight lines that would connect all 9 dots without me having to move the tip of my pen from the paper. In all, I believed that each activity helped to create this big picture- that picture being how we, as social activists and learners need to confront and interpret the many issues surrounding human rights. I feel as though even though we didn’t discuss in depth the many Human Rights that all people in the world share, we were informed about how important the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is as it highlights all of our human rights. 

I think that all of the activities, including the presentations on Saturday were important because they allowed for us to get different perspectives on the world, what people feel are human rights and why we deserve those rights, as well as learning more about rights as they pertain to immigrants/migrants and people of the African continent. 

Along with all of this also came getting more comfortable with working in groups with people who seem foreign and making conversation with people that resulted in more engaging. What I can say I discovered about myself this past weekend is that I have a strong interest in discussing human rights as it pertains to U.S. Citizens and more specifically, U.S. citizens who happen to be people of color. I understand that this interest of mine prevents me from really understanding Human Rights since they are rights that ALL people have. After this weekend, I realized that wanting minorities to benefit from the human rights they were given through birth isn’t the problem, but instead failing to realize that all people, even the people with disabilities are promised these rights is tragic. I also learned that I doubt myself a lot when it comes to discussing the structure of different governments and politics. I often turned away from many conversations that were being held this weekend because of the thought that I didn’t know anything. I am planning on educating myself more on what I feel I don’t know with the hopes of boosting my confidence. I learned a lot about South Africa this weekend, but what stuck with me was the lack of acknowledgment of sexuality. I actually pulled Zoe from Africa Unite to the side and asked why the topic barely came up in the activities and he said in South Africa sexuality is rarely talked about and even though Cape Town seems to be the most liberal part of South Africa, only in certain parts do topics such as Homosexuality and the LGBTI community get acknowledged. That was very mind blowing to me! Since I got to be a part of a team that represented Nigeria this past weekend, I can say that I at least know more about the historical background on a place other than Cape Town. With Nigeria being the largest country in Africa, it deals with its own economic and gender issues. While the fertility rate is high, basic sex education is lacking among women, we can link this back to low socioeconomic status among people in Nigeria. I do believe that this weekend though came with many surprises allowed for everyone to go home with something they didn’t come in with and I think that is what matters most.