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Voice of Amnesty volunteers
The experiences of young Amnesty volunteer who took part in leadership training.
The Amnesty International youth leadership training took place in Bundoran, Donegal in November. It was a great weekend, with lots of activism, socialising and learning going on! The purpose of the weekend was to give young people the skills to become leaders in their community, inspiring other young people and groups to get involved in the important work that Amnesty does in preventing and ending Human Rights abuses worldwide. To find out more about the work that Amnesty does in Ireland, and a bit more about the different ways that you can get involved, visit: www.amnesty.ie
“Hello my name is Sonia and I am on an Amnesty Youth group weekend in Donegal. I am really enjoying the time I have spent here so far. We were chosen to represent our school (Drumragh Integrated College in Omagh). Today we did drama exercises which dealt with the issues that we have learned about in our Amnesty groups such as violence against women, the death penalty and Guantanamo Bay. It was very useful and effective as it showed us different possible actions we could take to help some of these problems.”
“My name is Shannon and I am from the Drumragh Intergraded College Amnesty International group. I have really enjoyed the experience of the weekend and I would love to do it again sometime. My favourite thing about the weekend was probably directing the shaping of the candle out of people holding candles. This was a really fun experience and I learnt a lot of management skills from this.”
“On Sunday we took part in our own Amnesty demonstration, campaigning for women’s’ rights in Iran. We thought this was the most enjoyable part of the weekend and also the most inspirational. We learnt a lot about these issues on Saturday night as we watched a short animated film based on Iran. In learning all these new methods on how to campaign it has really inspired us to go back to Newcastle and put them to work as the weekend has really opened our eyes to the reality of people being deprived of their fundamental Human Rights.” - Rebecca and V'cenza.
“Wow my first amnesty week! Where to start? We were all thrown into our first activity of the morning, which was a role play exercise involving eight of us being certain characters you might have in social situations (or in this case an amnesty weekend). Then we had quite a few hours of a drama workshop. I think I heard a few complaints later of “If I ever have to shake another persons hand and/or ask them their favourite colour it will be the last thing I’ll ever do!” but none the less, our representations of the death penalty, domestic violence and wrongly treated prisoners got everyone hot under the collar.
Dan’s photographs of earlier campaigns gave us all inspiration for our next challenge, which was to design placards for a campaign on women’s rights in Iran. I don’t think the people of Bundoran had really seen anything like it before as we marched steadily onwards with all the girls (and boys!) in traditional hijab head wear. With our banners and placards, we walked along the beach, trying to look as grim and impressed as possible (but most of us failed at that!).
And so our weekend came to a nice close. I had made new friends, got loads of advice on how I was going to start up an amnesty group at school and had had a really good weekend.”
Find out how to set up an Amnesty Student and Youth Group.
