Youth Challenge
Teaching human rights & responsibilities.
Introduction to Youth Challenge
- Back to Table of Contents
- Foreword by the President
- Structure of Youth Challenge
- How is YC relevant to Students?
What is Youth Challenge?
Youth Challenge Teaching Human Rights and Responsibilities is a collection of resources and activities for use in Australian Secondary Schools. Each unit is designed to help students gain awareness about different human rights issues; the inception of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the impact of disability issues in schools, the various scenarios facing young people in the workplace, and the implications of sexual harassment in schools.
HREOC has run the Youth Challenge program for school students across Australia since 1998. The most recent program focussed on sexual harassment, with Youth Challenge events held in each Australian state and territory.
Following the success of the Youth Challenge program, the activities used in these workshops have been adapted for general use by all Australian school students. This module provides teaching strategies, structured activities and information about human rights that are applicable in everyday life. The resources are available free to teachers online and on CD-rom. A DVD is also available to promote discussion in the classroom.
Youth Challenge Teaching Human Rights and Responsibilities is designed to encourage students to examine human rights and the need to balance those rights with the rights of others. It is designed to hone the decision making skills of students through the examination of a range of situations where competing rights are presented, and it encourages students to come up with innovative and just solutions. Activities will assist teachers in educating students about human rights and responsibilities through role plays, real life scenarios, personal stories and prompted questions for discussion.
The material is curriculum linked to a range of key learning areas, though would be particularly suitable in Health/ PDHPE, Studies of Society and Environment (including History and Legal Studies) and Careers education.
This collection is part of the HREOC human rights education series available at www.humanrights.gov.au/education.
Please provide your feedback
HREOC is always working to improve our human rights education resources to ensure that they are useful to teachers and engaging and informative for students.
Did you find the resources and activities useful in your classroom? Did the Youth Challenge formats available suit your needs? What other formats or resources would be useful to you?
Feel free to email your comments to: education@humanrights.gov.au or fill out the Education Feedback online.
