Events

Our annual Human Rights Institute promotes good governance and social change. We train a select group of participants from around the country to strengthen their local advocacy efforts by using a human rights frame.

Alumni become part of a nationwide community of advocates and have access to ongoing education, technical support, and dialogue. Stay in touch to find out how you too can be a part of the next HRI!

Read about our impact

“I have learned so much through the Institute. It has absolutely deepened my commitment to utilizing a human rights framework in my work.”

-Former HRI participant

“I felt that HRI was a space where women from varied backgrounds (in all senses) built community, taught each other and learned from each other… I have been awed and impressed by the humility, generosity of spirit, passion and intellect of the women in this room. It’s got me really thinking about the connections between poverty, race, food justice, reproductive justice, youth development, bigotry and xenophobia….The impact of this institute is to rekindle my belief in those interconnections and to deepen my commitment to connect the local and the global.”

-Kulsum Ameji, Legal Assistance Foundation

“The Human Rights Institute Fellowship did what many such gatherings do and, what many fail to do. Great new information, knowledge sharing, ideas, creativity and connections among and between amazing activists, advocates and agitators – that was expected. What made this project so special was that the facilitators listened to us, they heard us. And they made the adjustments, from day to day, to strengthen and enlarge our experience. This was not a cookie-cutter program. It was gutsy and smart. Thank you.”

-Donna Red Wing, Grassroots Leadership

“The Human Rights Institute is an inspiring, moving, and transformative collective process that equips community leaders with tools to effectively apply the Human Rights framework in domestic advocacy work. I was thrilled to enrich my professional network and engage in multicultural dialogical encounters with leaders across the nation while navigating the definitions of human rights instruments, treaty systems and treaty based-bodies and learning practical steps to organize civil society to take action! In two words: highly recommended.”

-Giselle Cárcamo, Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center

“The Human Rights Institute Fellowship is a dynamic, content-rich and valuable experience. Participating in the Fellowship allowed me to understand how to apply a human rights perspective to my work and program, resulting in new opportunities for community engagement. I would recommend the HRI Fellowship program to anyone in the social justice field.”

-Tejpreet Kaur, The Sikh Coalition

“Attending the Human Rights Institute helped to clearly frame Black Women’s Blueprint’s strategic direction in terms of its implementation of human rights-based programs to address sexual assault and other intersecting oppression in Black women’s lives in the U.S. Attending the Institute helped us to change staff structure, as we hired a human rights research coordinator. The organization also was able to develop its own curriculum which fused human rights education with its core Black feminist principles. That curriculum is part of our organizer training. We are also now better able to plan our programs and prepare lay community for upcoming UN Committee meetings.”

– Farah Tanis, Black Women’s Blueprint

“The Institute reaffirmed the importance of ‘bringing human rights home’ to the U.S. It helped me to see the usefulness of the human rights framework as an umbrella under which to bring together different groups doing social justice work, including groups who had no real history of collaborating or providing one another with support. Adoption of the framework helps to break down identity and issue silos separating groups. This has been very helpful to the human rights commission on which I serve, which works in a collaborative way and seeks to bring together a diverse array of social justice allies around what we on the commission now frame as human rights issues. Also, the human rights position taken by Amigos, an immigrant rights organization, has led it to ally with other groups on LGBT, Native American, youth, and women’s issues. Amigos receives their support on immigrant rights issues in return. On the human rights commission and in Amigos we understand that many groups in the community are doing human rights work, even if they don’t describe it as such, and that all our work is interrelated, interdependent, and that we can each get more good work done through collaborative efforts.”

– Ken Neubeck, Eugene Human Rights Commission