INTRODUCTION

• Facilitator may share the video found below, which features a meeting of ten Serbs and ten Croats in Brussels who come together during Holy Week in 2017 to develop empathy and understanding for one another.

This video provides a good starting point for how people from different backgrounds can learn from one another through the telling of lived experiences. 

• Alternatively, consider demonstrating storytelling by providing a story that illustrates issues surrounding Commitment VI from a local context. 

Note: If time is short, you may want to omit the video and proceed with participant stories. 

DISCUSSION

• To stimulate discussion, ask the questions under the Discussion Questions tab. 

• Participants may be given time to write down their thoughts before sharing. They can use their Faith for Rights notebooks, if provided.

CONCLUSION

• Encourage participants to share these stories with family and friends in order to spread awareness. 

• Has there been a situation you had to intervene in defense of a person belonging to a minority? 
• What type of discriminatory practices are more likely to occur in your environment? 
• What types of minorities are there in the country where you live? Who are the different actors in their respective areas and how can they better ensure respect for the rights of minorities?
• What positive or negative role has the media played in this respect?

• Video documentary: Standing Up for Minority Rights, depicts young Serbs and Croats meeting together during the Holy Week 2017 in Brussels. This project by the Conference of European Churches was undertaken in partnership with the Quaker Council for European Affairs and the Church’s Commission for Migrants in Europe. (The documentary runs for 19 minutes.)

Internet connectivity is required to stream the documentary, Standing Up for Minority Rights.

If it is not possible to screen this documentary during the session, participants can watch it on their own prior to coming to the session. (The documentary’s length is 19 minutes.) During the session, participants may summarize the documentary’s content before beginning their discussion. 

• The #Faith4Rights modules are flexible and require adaptation by the facilitators before their use. Case studies related to peer-to-peer exercises in the 18 modules need to be selected by the facilitators from within the environment where the learning takes place. The #Faith4Rights toolkit is a prototype methodology that requires contextualization, based on the text of the 18 commitments, context, and additional supporting documents.
• Not all issues raised need to be resolved. This would be an impossible and even a counterproductive target. The aim is rather to enhance critical thinking and communication skills, admitting that some questions could receive many answers, depending on numerous factors.
• Tensions may occur during discussions related to “faith” and “rights.” Most of these tensions are due to human interpretations. Learning sessions are spaces for constructive dialogue in a dynamic process where tensions can be reduced with the help of clear methodologies, including pre-emptive situation analysis and evidence of positive results in areas of intersectionality between faith and rights.
• When preparing the sessions, facilitators need to factor in the profile, age, and backgrounds of participants. Focused attention on the learning objectives can transform tensions into constructive exploration of new ideas.
• Meaningful engagement requires democratically pre-established rules. Facilitators should dedicate time with participants to elaborate these rules together at the outset and act all along the training as their custodians.
• The time frames suggested in this #Faith4Rights toolkit are merely indicative. Facilitators may adapt them freely to suit the needs of their group of participants. The key balance is between respecting the overall time frame while not cutting short a positive exchange momentum.
• To ensure optimal and sustainable benefit, facilitators may create a “training notebook” for participants during their peer-to-peer learning sessions. It would contain a compilation of templates to help participants keep track of what they have learned throughout the program and eventually use this notebook as their personalized follow-up tool.
• When technically feasible, facilitators are also advised to project the module under discussion on screen in order to alternate between discussions thereon and showing the audio-visual materials listed in each module or any other items selected by the facilitator.

• “Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.” (Rumi)
• “Your true character is most accurately measured by how you treat those who can do ‘Nothing’ for you.” (Mother Theresa)