Peer-to-Peer Activity: Brainstorming
Overview
Participants brainstorm what they would do if creating their own training session on faith and human rights. This is an opportunity for participants to consider the intersectionality between faith and rights at the very outset of their Faith for Rights experience. This exercise can also be used by the group to adapt their Faith for Rights sessions to fit their needs and goals.
Competencies
- Participants explore what approaches, messages, or resources they would incorporate in a Faith for Rights program.
- Participants articulate potential benefits of interfaith collaboration on their communities.
INTRODUCTION
- Participants brainstorm what they would do if creating their own training session on faith and human rights.
- Remind participants that they are not expected to create a comprehensive strategy or conduct research, but that they should brainstorm general ideas.
- Display the Slides of the Preamble of the 18 Commitments on Faith for Rights or print copies for participants to review as they determine how their training ideas align with the preamble’s aims.
- The questions under the Discussion Questions tab also may be used to guide the process.
ACTIVITY & DISCUSSION
Give participants 5 minutes to write down as many ideas as they can think of related to an initial brainstorming question, such as:
“How would you design a training session on faith and human rights?”
Participants may consider what messages they would share, what approaches they would use, and what resources they would consult in designing their own session.
Encourage participants to each write down a simple mind map of their ideas, keywords, and phrases that they can refer to throughout the exercise. (They may create the maps in their Faith for Rights notebooks, if provided.)
Participants may share their ideas and discuss them with the group.
CONCLUSION
At the end of their Faith for Rights experience, participants may review these initial mind maps to evaluate the trajectory of their Faith for Rights sessions.
- How would you design a training session on faith and human rights?
- How would you convey human rights messages to faith actors or faith messages to human rights actors?
- Which approach would you adopt?
- What resources would you consult?
- How do your ideas compare with the vision formulated in the Preamble of the 18 Commitments on Faith for Rights?
Facilitator may display Slides of the Preamble of the 18 Commitments on Faith for Rights or print copies for participants to review as they determine how their training ideas align with the preamble’s aims.
- PDF: Preamble of the 18 Commitments of Faith for Rights Slides
- PDF: Preamble of the 18 Commitments of Faith for Rights Text (suitable for printing copies)
- 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.
Preamble of the 18 Commitments on Faith for Rights:
We, faith-based and civil society actors working in the field of human rights and gathered in Beirut on 28-29 March 2017, express the deep conviction that our respective religions and beliefs share a common commitment to upholding the dignity and the equal worth of all human beings. Shared human values and equal dignity are therefore common roots of our cultures. Faith and rights should be mutually reinforcing spheres. Individual and communal expression of religions or beliefs thrive and flourish in environments where human rights, based on the equal worth of all individuals, are protected. Similarly, human rights can benefit from deeply rooted ethical and spiritual foundations provided by religions or beliefs.
The present declaration on “Faith for Rights” reaches out to persons belonging to religions and beliefs in all regions of the world, with a view to enhancing cohesive, peaceful and respectful societies on the basis of a common action-oriented platform agreed by all concerned and open to all actors that share its objectives. We value that our declaration on Faith for Rights, like its founding precedent the Rabat Plan of Action, were both conceived and conducted under the auspices and with the support of the United Nations that represents all peoples of the world, and enriched by UN human rights mechanisms such as Special Rapporteurs and Treaty Body members.
The 2012 Rabat Plan of Action articulates three specific core responsibilities of religious leaders:
(a) Religious leaders should refrain from using messages of intolerance or expressions which may incite violence, hostility or discrimination; (b) Religious leaders also have a crucial role to play in speaking out firmly and promptly against intolerance, discriminatory stereotyping and instances of hate speech; and (c) Religious leaders should be clear that violence can never be tolerated as a response to incitement to hatred (e.g. violence cannot be justified by prior provocation).
In order to give concrete effect to the above three core responsibilities articulated by the Rabat Plan of Action, which has repeatedly been positively invoked by States, we formulate the following chart of
18 commitments on “Faith for Rights,” including corresponding follow-up actions.