Training for Action: Translating Theory to Activism

By HIA Fellow Mariana Pryven

How can we use knowledge of the past to influence the present? As we approached the 15^th of June, our fellowship was in full swing and we were halfway through the program. The input phase was over, during which we almost became Poles ourselves by way of being aware and informed about the challenges current Polish society faces today.  During the input phase the group was wholeheartedly committed to listening, absorbing, discussing, asking, answering, and commenting in no particular order, with curiosity and interest as the sole guide. Poland, as a main study case, through the course of the program unfolded for us as a battlefield of clashing ideologies in the past, a society dealing with the necessity to secure and develop the system of human rights protection in the present, and a functioning civic community in the future. Would we be able to use Polish experience and bring it to school classrooms? Would we manage to pass our joy of living in peace and equality to the younger ones?

So, the challenge for the rest of the program became clear: to move from receiving to giving, from learning to acting and from being engaged to engaging others. In the next two weeks we will be working in smaller international groups to develop workshop scenarios for the target group of high school students in Poland. These scenarios through guided provision and detailed planning, drafting, interviewing, and researching will culminate in off-the-shelf tools for educators, including ourselves, to be used for work with youth on various human rights-related topics. Naturally, the rest of the program will be dedicated to the question of how we teach what we have learned.

When we arrived early in the morning, what was unusual is that we didn’t know what exactly to expect and what would happen to our designated role of listeners. Our team was joined by Marta Brzezińska-Hubert, facilitator of international trainings and coordinator of intercultural projects. She immediately integrated into our group and suggested a couple of exercises to begin with, which led to much loudness and enthusiasm.

For the first exercise, the participants put chairs in a circle and stood behind them: each person behind their own chair. The task was to bend a chair back and to keep balancing it on its two legs only. Everybody had to move from one chair to another without letting each following chair land on its four legs until the full circle is finished. Even if one chair landed on the floor, the circle was broken and we had to start from the beginning. Should you first decide for a strategy how to do that or do by trying? Should you choose a leader or let the discussion flow/chaotically happen? Do you allow time for evaluation of your strategy or jump to another one?

HIA Fellows work together to solve a puzzle during a training session
Photo by Benjamin Overton

Most certainly, all of these questions were posed after they were put through a professional lens of the trainer who explained the meaning of the exercise and its dynamics. Thus, for us an overwhelming amount of fun morphed into reflecting upon our experience of problem-solving and quick decision-making in the success-oriented situation.

Progressively throughout the day we had a couple of more similar exercises, whose educational value was thoroughly explained afterwards. And then we learned that this strategy is called experiential learning, an educational theory that is successful due to its potential of including all of the senses possible: sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. It also allows for accommodating individual learning styles and, importantly, people with learning disabilities. We touched upon methods of formal and informal education, which intersect and complement each other and which we will explore more in-depth later during the training. 

HIA Fellows complete a learning exercise during a training session
Photo by Benjamin Overton

The first day of the training finished by working in small teams, which have already been composed around 7 human rights topics: the rights of Jews, the rights of Roma people, the rights of people with disabilities, the figures of Jan Karski and Irena Sendler, asylum seekers and migrants, and rights of LGBTQ persons. Each group will link history with the particular human rights aspect to explore and develop study sessions for youth.

The task is a challenge of balancing interests and psychological development of teenagers and gravity of some of the questions to be explored. Pre-existing interactive methods and innovative strategies will be the topic of the next days.

A float in the Warsaw Parade of Equality 2013
Photo by Benjamin Overton

After the training a few of us joined the Warsaw Equality Parade 2013, which was held under the slogan Różnorodni, Równoprawni (All diverse, all equal). This year the event gathered around 8 thousand participants, including LGBTQ persons, minority rights activists, and anyone else interested in building a society, in which every minority feels comfortable and safe. This year, among other claims the Equality Parade demanded the removal of architectural barriers that are limiting access to different public places for people with disabilities and parents with children prams; banning of hate speech towards gender and sexual identity, and introduction of new, ideologically-neutral human sexuality education to schools.

The event was a blast! During the sunny Saturday afternoon around the Warsaw center one could watch thousands of passing people, greeting the audience, smiling, dancing, waving from the buses, and holding rainbow flags – symbols for acceptance and diversity of the human kind. Gazeta Wyborcza reports, it was the largest and the most peaceful parade in years.

Sadly, we learned shortly after the parade news that Robert Biedroń, the first openly gay Member of Parliament in Poland, was attacked after the parade by two people who were immediately detained by the police.   

Nevertheless, the Parade of Equality 2013 was an apt celebration for people and, hopefully, in retrospect it would mark a milestone of the transformation of the Polish society. The Parade managed to gather wider circles of discriminated groups, addressed a variety of minority problems, and struck me as particularly inclusive and engaging. The success of this parade would be something special for the young HIA leaders who, tonight to the merry sounds of Warsaw in the evening, smoothly transitioned from theory to practice.