Establishing new social patterns
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Re-writing Traditional Stories to Gain a Gender-Sensitive Perspective

Fairytales and stories are an essential element of popular culture and communicate social beliefs about gender roles. The Women’s Stories project of the Women and Memory Forum was started to give women an opportunity to challenge traditional texts, re-define their role in society, and develop writing skills by re-writing stories from their own perspective.

Founded in 1997 in Egypt, the Women and Memory Forum’s mission is to promote a society based on justice and equal opportunities for men and women. One of the ways the organization does this is through re-reading and re-defining Arab cultural history. The Women’s Stories project, a set of gender-sensitive writing workshops, focuses on re-defining and expanding the portrayal of women in folk literature.

Creating a venue on the Internet for former child soldiers to share their stories and develop new skills

Launched in 2000, The Child Soldier Project of iEarn Sierra Leone created a website for former child soldiers to share their stories. www.childsoldiers.org featured the essays, poems, artwork and voices of former child soldiers and offered an online forum.

Strategy for addressing child labor, sexual abuse and trafficking in the entertainment industry

Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) has worked to end child labor and trafficking in the circus industry. There is a serious problem of trafficking of young girls between Nepal and India (both countries are on the Tier 2 Watch list in U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report). The girls are trafficked for the purposes of slavery, including sexual slavery and prostitution.

Due to the socio – political situation in Nepal, coupled with illiteracy and ignorance, a large number of children (especially girls) are trafficked into India. Within India, the unorganized sectors like the entertainment industry, circuses, agriculture, brothels, etc., play a willing host to these victims, as a lot of industrial laws are not applicable in these sectors. There is little or no significant effort on the part of the government to prevent these practices. Thus, a pro-active initiative by the civil society sector was imperative in the prevention of abuse and exploitation in these sectors. The initiative was to involve the forces within the industry and ensure legal compliance and human rights' based approach for prevention of a social evil.

Establishing village peace committees to build understanding between internally displaced people and host communities

The Community Trust Fund (CTF) involved youth volunteers as Peace Facilitators to reduce friction between internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host communities (or residence of temporary settlement of IDPs) in Sri Lanka.

Culturally sensitive materials facilitate discussion on women's rights by Muslim women

Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI) uses an informal educational model that allows Muslim women to easily identify universal human rights concepts in terms of local cultural traditions, myths, texts and local languages. This model facilitates the transmission of the human rights concepts inscribed in major international documents to grassroots populations in Muslim societies.   

Creating a Human Rights City / Community

Since 1998 PDHRE is facilitating the development of Human Rights Cities. These cities pledge to create a community in which all members, from policy makers to ordinary citizens, learn about and adhere to human rights obligations. Women and men across all sections of the city learn to understand human rights as a way of life with its political, moral and legal implications.

Mobilizing cultural resources to build an anti-racist youth network

Never Again (Nigdy Wiecej) is an anti-racist, anti-fascist organization created in 1992 to monitor and document racist and fascist activities, and conduct educational campaigns centered on music and sports. Never Again mobilizes cultural resources to build an anti-racist youth network in Poland.

Using a nomination campaign to identify new constituencies for human rights

The 5-in-6 program in South Africa raises awareness of the widespread problem of domestic violence through a nomination campaign for male role models. Volunteers go house to house asking women and children to nominate men in their lives as “Everyday Heroes.” The nomination forms – more than 50,000 have been returned – are displayed in churches and community centers, raising the public profile of the campaign. The men are invited to meetings where they discuss ways to fight domestic violence in their communities. The name of the program comes from the statistic that in South Africa one man in six abuses the women in his life.

Engaging local leaders to become women’s rights and victim advocates

The Coalition on Violence against Women (COVAW) engages chiefs and other local leaders to become women’s rights advocates and resources for victims. The program was formed because of the lack of women’s rights advocates for women who have been subjected to violence. Women who have been abused usually turn either to local hospitals/clinics or to their chiefs.