This summer, over 200 young activists from over 40 countries across the Middle East and Africa enrolled in the fourth annual AMEL Institute. The six-week online training program instructed students in human rights, activist safety and self-care, Holocaust and genocide history and prevention, conflict transformation, nonviolent movement building, and democratic development.
Participants had the opportunity to learn from experienced activists, storytellers, and journalists from the Middle East and Africa as well as from professors at Stanford and Harvard University. Students attended lectures and live discussions via Zoom, completed quizzes and assignments to practice the material they learned, and made connections with other participants through ongoing online discussions.
““As a Young human right activist from Kenya I am still learning to get my voice out there in the best way possible and thanks to AMEL INSTITUTE, I have been able to learn from the best in this field and seasoned lecturers from institutions across the world.””
This iteration of the course was conducted via a new training website developed by AMEL using Open edX, an open source version of the edX software developed by Harvard and MIT for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Open edX is a massively scalable learning software technology and thus AMEL Institute’s adoption of the software will allow it to scale-up its enrollment of activists in future cohorts. This cohort also benefited from translations of all course lectures, quizzes and assignments into Arabic and French.
Feedback from the program’s participants was overwhelmingly positive with nearly all trainees agreeing that the program helped them to become more effective and better protect themselves in their activism, as well as to connect with a network of activists across the Middle East and Africa who can support one another.
At the conclusion of the program, participants reflected on the knowledge they gained in a wide range of human rights topics and were beginning to apply this new knowledge in their activism and spread it throughout their communities.
““I got lots of information I didn’t know previously, like how the Holocaust happened, what triggered it, [and about] genocide and how to avoid causing it in my comunity and country. I also understand managing my communications and safety...How to create awareness for my activities...[and] more about democracy.””
““As a community peace builder, the knowledge I have gained has strengthened my advocacy ability and now I can boldly enlighten the youths of my community to the dangers of violence extremism.””
