In Fall 2016, ICNC launched a grant program for high school educators from around the world to support development and implementation of educational initiatives on civil resistance movements and nonviolent action for their students. Fall 2018 is our second round of awarding fellows. Four exceptional fellows were selected to develop and teach courses on this topic in different parts of the world during the 2018/2019 academic year.
2018 High School Curriculum Fellowship awardees include:
Tatiana Daré Araújo is a Sociologist and Lawyer, with expertise in Human Rights and Public Security Management. She received a Master’s degree in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Espírito Santo in Brazil as an Espírito Santo Foundation for Research (FAPES) fellow. Since 2007, she has worked with universities, government, research institutes and NGOs in researching public security, democratic governance, criminal justice, human rights, and transitional justice. That work led to consulting for the UNDP-Brazil, producing reports for the government, teaching activities and constructing social networks and partnerships with different state and non-state actors. Tatiana is currently a Ph.D. candidate in International Politics and Conflict Resolution at the University of Coimbra in partnership with the Centre for Social Studies (CES) in Portugal. She is developing research and case studies on local mediation programs as an alternative to solving violent conflicts in favelas and poor Brazilian neighborhoods. In this context, she is developing studies on conflict transformation and peacebuilding, which inspired her to create and coordinate a social intervention in a public school in the community of Manguinhos. The project, named “Manguinhos for peace: Engaging teachers and students in community peacebuilding,” aims to introduce practices of non-violent communication, education for peace, civic education, conflict transformation for a culture of peace, and is financed through a fellowship from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ).
Course Title: Nonviolent Resistance in a Time of Democratic Backsliding: Rethinking Democracy and Civic Mobilization in Brazil. (March – April 2019)
Course Abstract: The course intends to provide knowledge and critical views through sociological, historical, and political perspectives across two main themes: “nonviolent actions” and “civil resistance,” emphasizing how “people power” can be an important mechanism of both citizenship and social engagement in facing state repression. This will be done through selected literature, class discussions, and movie debates on civil resistance around the world, combining practical experiences of successful and historical cases of resistance, which include political and non-institutional mobilizations. Nonviolent action and civil resistance have been considered necessary to strengthen social and civic movements and promote social changes in the current moment of instability in Brazil. Because of the political and economic crisis in Brazil that culminated in the coup d’état in 2015, many forms of violence (structural, institutional, direct, and symbolic) have been increasing. The course will provide students with the tools and techniques of civil resistance and conflict analyses in order to map actors, conflicts and claims and, thus, create new strategies of resistance while strengthening the systems already in place. At the end of the course, students will create and implement a strategy of nonviolent action and civic movement of their choice.
Ilaria Zomer is Peace Educator for Centro Studi Sereno Regis. She manages local and transnational projects on the topics of nonviolence and transformation of conflicts especially focusing on young people, teenagers and children target. She used to work abroad in conflict contexts applying peace education principles to situations of direct violence and marginalization and empowering young people as peace builders in conflicts in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, Albania, Northern Ireland and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Italy, she developed a model of peer education as a tool of political change for young people.
Course Title: Nonviolent Action Academy (October 2018 – March 2019)
Course Abstract: Since its recent elections, Italy has seen a growing need to spread a culture of civil resistance, as a viable, achievable and organized action aimed at social change among those boys and girls who find an individual solution in violence, which only traumatizes them, stigmatizes them in the eyes of society and leads them more at the margin of the society itself. Nonviolent Action Academy aims to make the scientific knowledge of civil resistance accessible to Italian students and especially to those who face daily injustices and who are most at risk of resorting to dangerous and violent resistance. The training course is aimed at 25 high school students from Turin, ages 17-18. These students will come from schools in which the recruitment is greater by the military bodies of the state and those with a significant number of young people who, because of their identity, sexual orientation, origin, religion, still suffer forms of discrimination. The program will involve ten bi-weekly training sessions. Each session will last for two hours. Working groups will support the comprehension of the studying materials in English, and promote cooperative learning, mutual knowledge and help among students.