The Seychelles National Youth Council (SNYC) in collaboration with a Mauritian-based NGO, named ‘Dis moi’, held a workshop yesterday for a group of young citizens to sensitise them about human rights.
The session, which was the first of its kind, took place yesterday afternoon at the SNYC conference room, at Orion Mall, Victoria.
It was led by three representatives from the NGO ‘Dis moi’, which is an organisation representing human rights in the Indian Ocean.
The organization, which has been in existence since 2012, is active in multiple countries in the Indian Ocean including Rodrigues, Madagascar and Reunion Island.
Yesterday’s session comprised different activities which enlightened the participants on human rights. They used innovative methods to capture the attention of the participants and get them to open up about themselves and their ideas of what human rights entails.
One of the interesting methods used consisted of a participant choosing a random object from a box of miscellaneous items and to find a way to describe themselves by using the item and identifying with it.
Marcus Mederic, the director for Youth Empowerment and wellbeing at SNYC, said that there was a necessity to do this exchange because SNYC is in a process of empowering the youth to a level where they can stand up for themselves and be knowledgeable in subjects such as human rights, which comes with a wide range of benefits.
“Once they have a deeper knowledge concerning their human rights, it will help them everywhere they go and they could also help others as well. As a national council, one of our mandates is to advocate for the youth and thus we saw it very necessary to do this session,” he said.
Following this first session, there will be a Training of Trainers comprising a selected few participants who attended the first session, who will then be trained further on the topic, so they could in return run a new ‘Human Rights Club’ programme in Seychelles.
The project director of ‘Dis moi’, Melanie Valére-Cicéron, said that there is a great enthusiasm here in Seychelles to do activities on human rights, which is evident by the fact that they are planning to install their first human rights club in Plaisance secondary school.
“One of our objectives is to have young human rights defenders in the Indian Ocean to network with each other. And today we are observing how much they know about human rights in an open and safe space,” she said.
She also said she hopes to have a long working relationship with Ceps (Citizens Engagement Platform Seychelles) and SNYC and potentially have an MoU to further establish the programme that is needed to be followed.
Angelique Juliette, who was a participant in the session, said that this activity was a very good initiative by the SNYC as the sensitisation of human rights among young adults will greatly benefit many in the future.
“As young people who will be taking over in the future it is very important for us to know our rights and when our rights have either been violated or when we are violating someone else’s,” she said.
She said that the session was very interesting as it gave them the freedom to express what they view as human rights and also being corrected on some aspects which they might have wrongly assessed.
The accompanying photos show some highlights of the session.
Courtesy: Diane Larame (Nation.sc)
