This is an initiative launched in Tarragona by the Helsinki Spain Organization and the URV.
28/06/2024.- The Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) and the Helsinki Spain Organization collaborate in the project “Youth for Youth: educating in Human Rights and SDGs”, whose first phase took place in Tarragona from April 22 to 26.
“Youth for Youth: educating in human rights and SDGs” is a human rights and values education and awareness project aimed at children and young university students through human rights training, values awareness and youth volunteering that contributes to the development of a human rights culture in which adolescents are aware of their own rights and their obligations towards others, promoting their development as responsible members of a global, interdependent, free and peaceful, pluralistic and inclusive society.
Josefa Canals, professor of Psychology at the URV and member of the PROEMO Network, participated in the training course on mental and emotional health together with her colleague at the Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology of the URV, Anna Huguet. In addition, the course had a wide range of speakers including Emma Pérez, Irene Delgado, Rosa María Casas, Óscar Saladié, Alexandre Moreno and Marina Alcaina, and the collaboration of entities such as Red Cross Tarragona, the Faculty of Tourism and Geography of the URV, or the City Council of Tarragona, among others.
Once this initial training phase is completed, the young university volunteers put their knowledge into practice in the schools agreed upon by Helsinki España and, through a participatory methodology using pedagogical dynamics and games, give awareness-raising workshops to school-age children.
The young university students, far from becoming mere listeners, become the real actors of the project and those responsible for the transformation in their communities. The combination of training and volunteering is the most effective formula for the assimilation of concepts and the acquisition of values. The schoolchildren interact very positively with the young university students.
Helsinki Spain is a human rights organization created in 1992 to promote compliance with the principles relating to human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Helsinki Final Act of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and has currently trained 5,150 volunteers from more than 75 different universities in human rights and SDGs. Through them, they have raised awareness among more than 40,084 children from more than 100 schools in the autonomous communities of Andalusia, Castilla y León, Castilla la Mancha, Valencia, Galicia, Canary Islands, Madrid, Basque Country and Principality of Asturias. Internationally, the project has been developed in the United States, Italy, Mexico and Portugal, and has also trained 200 mothers and fathers in emotional intelligence and conflict resolution, as well as 100 teachers in gender equality and human rights.
PROEMO is a research network RED2022-134247-T funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the State Research Agency) through the State Program to promote scientific-technical research and its transfer, within the framework of the State Plan for Scientific, Technical and Innovation Research 2021-2023.
It is made up of researchers from seven Spanish public and private universities: the University of Jaén, the Miguel Hernández University, the Rovira y Virgili University, the University of Málaga, the University of Almería, the Autonomous University of Madrid and the University of Deusto.
In addition, it has an External Advisory Council made up of entities such as the Spanish Youth Institute (INJUVE), attached to the Ministry of Youth and Children, the Spanish Youth Council (CJE), the European Youth Information and Counselling Agency (ERYICA), the Princess of Girona Foundation (FPdGi), the Integral Health group of the FELGTBI+, the Confederation of Organizations of Psychopedagogy and Guidance of Spain (COPOE), the Spanish Association of Mutual Help against Social Phobia and Anxiety Disorders (Amtaes), the Andalusian Association of Youth Technicians (AATJ) and the Asturian Association for the Attention and Care of Children (Asaci).
