Fourteen years ago, I was a regular college student until I attended a one-week youth summit on human rights conducted by Amnesty International Philippines. At that event, I learned about various human rights issues and had the opportunity to be with victims of human rights violations. The firsthand stories told by the victims impacted me the most. I told myself that I would not wait until I or someone around me became a victim before I act and speak out for human rights. Since then, I have been a human rights advocate. While it can sometimes be disheartening to see the continued impunity and the endless struggles for justice, these are also the very same reasons why I continue to fight for human rights.
My favorite aspect of HRAP has been attending the different workshops that capacitate us to become more effective advocates and to have greater impact in our human rights work. It has been such a great opportunity to hear new ideas, presented in a simple and practicable manner that can be easily adapted and applied to the human rights situations in our home countries. The workshops—especially the one on Research, Writing and Documentation with Diederik Lohman and Jane Buchanan at Human Rights Watch, Jo Becker of HRW on campaign advocacy, Bukeni Waruzi of WITNESS on video advocacy, Erik Detiger on fundraising, and TR Lansner on media presentation—equipped us with the necessary tools needed to strategically improve our work. Another important workshop was the stress management workshop with Sheila Platt. The kind of work we deal with is truly challenging and oftentimes stressful. Frequently, advocates neglect to deal with their own situations and struggles. It was thus very helpful to have this session to learn ways to adequately cope and in the process become better advocates. Finally, the thing I loved most about HRAP are both the formal and informal conversations we have with our fellow advocates during and after workshops where we not only learn from each other, but at the same time develop a deeper sense of camaraderie and warm friendship.
HRAP has provided me with lessons that I can transfer not only within my own organization, but within the human rights community in my country. Specifically, I plan to include in our strategic planning the various aspects of advocacy I’ve learned from the program, which will include the revisiting of our advocacy methods and strategies to make them more efficient and effective, as well as intensifying our fundraising efforts wherein the networking activities we did will truly be helpful. I also plan to replicate the different workshops conducted in HRAP to help capacitate my fellow human rights defenders in the Philippines. It has been a great privilege to be included in HRAP. I plan to maximize every opportunity I can to apply and further develop the skills and lessons I learned here, and share them with others as well.
