Developing Educational Resources to Roll Out the Change-Makers Youth Leadership Programme Across Africa

This project aims to realize new impacts of previous AHRC awards, and to extend these impacts to new audiences: 1. 'From Victims to Perpetrators? Discourses of German Wartime Suffering' (Major Research Grant, 2005-08); 2. 'The German Experience of Coming-to-Terms with the Past' (Follow-on funding, 2014-15); 3. 'Mobilising Multidirectional Memory to Build More Resilient Communities in South Africa' (Follow-on funding, 2017-18); 4. 'Building Inclusive Civil Societies in 5 Post-Conflict countries' (Network+, 2017-21).

The original research ('Victims') analysed debates on perpetration and victimhood in Germany, identifying narrative strategies that link the country's changing understanding of its historical responsibility for the Holocaust to emerging global discourses on memory, trauma and human rights. The findings of this research were subsequently integrated into a travelling exhibition, in partnership with the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre (JHGC), as a resource for linking local histories of conflict to human rights education ('Exhibition'). The exhibition toured South Africa, the UK, the USA, and Ireland, to museums, galleries, cathedrals, universities, and schools, and engaged some 30 000 people. Next, 'Mobilising Multidirectional Memory' and 'Building Inclusive Civil Societies' worked with the JHGC to launch a Change-Makers programme, using historical case studies to build leadership skills for young people in South Africa and to develop their understanding of human rights. An evaluation of the pilot Change-Makers programme was undertaken, with colleagues at the University of Pretoria.

This new project aims to implement the recommendations of that evaluation as the JHGC continues to roll out the Change-Makers programme beyond South Africa to other post-conflict African countries (with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation). First, there is a need to build a larger bank of case studies of historical trauma (beyond the Holocaust and apartheid) that can resonate around Africa. Second, there is a need to connect facilitators (trainers) working on Change-Makers in Africa to colleagues around the world, to both build their understanding of the global contexts of human rights education and to integrate African case studies-and African learning-into the global debate on using the historical past to build more resilient societies. To achieve this ambition, the project involves two new partners: The Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation (IHJR, Netherlands) and the Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS, Austria).

The project PI (Taberner) and an Impact Officer will work with the IHJR to develop case studies from their database of studies of more than two hundred sites of 'contested histories' from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas, with special attention given to examples from around Africa (e.g. Rwanda, Namibia, Nigeria, etc.). These new case studies will be developed into online, downloadable materials for 'train the trainer' workshops, in close collaboration with experienced trainers at the JHGC engaged on the existing Change-Makers programme and in the roll-out across Africa. Finally, we will use the convening power of the Salzburg Global Seminar to organise an event in Africa to connect African partners from the roll-out of Change-Makers to the IHJR's case-studies authors. This workshop will deepen global understandings of the work being done across Africa and also better integrate African partners into the global human rights education discourse.

The outcomes of the project will include: 1. A suite of online materials that can be used in 'train the trainer' workshops for the Change-Makers programme as it rolls out across Africa; 2. Capacity building in Africa on human rights education; 3. Capacity building amongst the global human rights education community as they learn from African examples; 4. Training and career-development for educators at the JHGC and for the Impact Officer.