UB's Research Office is embarking on a 3 year EU funding project, entitled Strengthening Human Rights Advocacy Among Youth In Belize. The objective is to educate and inform young persons about their rights, which will hopefully lead to social change. The project had its official launch today and the coordinator, Abbie Godoy Guillen told us more about it.
Abbie Godoy Guillen, Project Coordinator, UB-EU Funded Project on Human Rights
"The first year we're really focusing on research and we're doing that through the research office at UB which is also where the project lives, at UB and then the second year we're doing capacity building so workshops, seminars, we're partnering with the global campus of human rights which is an international university out of Venice and their president and Academic Director was just here last week with us and they held our first two sessions and we'll be hosting similar sessions throughout the second year. They will also be assisting us in taking our large scale survey and making a curriculum that can be used across all ATLIB institutions in Belize and in the third year, we're taking our show on the road, across all of Belize through town halls in every district and San Pedro."
"What we want to see is that human rights is imbedded in academic and the culture in Belize especially in the youth. We know that it's very difficult to change attitudes after a certain age but we're hoping that at the university, this should be an incubator for thought and basic civic change so we're hoping that through human rights education and advocacy, people will be human rights defenders themselves and take that into their communities."
Erja Askola, European Union Ambassador to Belize
"One of our fundamental values is to promote human rights, democracy, and rule of law globally in the world and this project fits very well into that strategic approach and we like to partner with the academia and universities like the University of Belize to bring this agenda to the local level and now we can help the university in their studies to produce research and information for educational processes but then also for policy making purposes for the government and for other actors to work on it so I think the university really plays an important role and civil society as whole in the promotion of human rights in general."
"I'm very happy to see this happening in Belize because I'm just newly appointed ambassador to Belize since last December and one of my big properties in all the partner countries is always to connect to universities and to work with the civil society and the academia to make sure that our cooperation is put in the best possible use and it's also sustainable because when we support research in areas like human rights, this will benefit the population of Belize in a much broader sense and also in the future."
The EU is donating 300,000 euros, which is approximately 680,000 Belize dollars.
Email
Print