Before embarking on our Human Rights project, we were brainstorming on the most effective ways to raise awareness of Human Rights in the Buryat Republic among the youth population. Taking into consideration the magnitude of our goals as well as the modesty of our organizational recourses (we are just a few young people who came together to implement our vision of better society), we came to the conclusion that the best way for us to achieve our goals would be to concentrate on youth clubs. We concentrated on youth clubs because the present system of youth clubs is more flexible and open to new ideas than the school system.

Our first task involved organizing a Human Rights Camp together with one of the Youth Clubs and we wanted to continue this work throughout the year with our teenagers along with sharing our experiences with the educators and administrations of other clubs. After the camp took place, and continuing into the start of the new school year, we organized three (3) planning sessions for teenagers from our camp who showed interest in continuing their Human Rights activities. Many of these teenagers have already assisted us in conducting seminars for various classes in 2 additional schools. After an evaluation and analyses of our activities, we decided to start working with the school system as well.

In working with the school system, it was necessary to start with the school administration as they are the ones who make decisions regarding school life. During our seminars, we utilized interactive methods which allowed the participants to use their creative skills. We planned and prepared methodological seminars titled “Innovative Methods to Teaching of Human Rights” and prepared CD’s with different materials on human rights. Fifteen (15) directors’ assistants from various schools in Ulan-Ude participated in the seminar, which took place on October 28th. At the end of the seminars, many participants commented that the seminar was too short and this showed us that an interest had been generated (another sign was that after we made an announcement regarding our Human Rights exhibition, many groups from these schools attended the exhibition). After the seminar, many participants expressed an interest in having a Human Rights workshop in our schools. This was our first big step in our goal in establishing different Human Rights activities in a new format within our school system; however, this is only one of the results that we wanted to achieve.

After the exhibition many participants left their contact information as they wanted to continue their involvement in our future activities, and we hope that these participants with be the ones who make the difference in the future. Because we can not go to every school and conduct workshops, we would like to establish materials and information for the school administration to support teachers and future school volunteer groups who will work in the Human Rights field. We are working together with our other Project Management Team (PMT), which has prepared a Human Rights exhibition that has been attended by many school groups as well as University students.

Although new people continually join our project and our actions are successful, we realize that are far away from reaching our goals. We see our activities as part of an organic process and we are now in the process of planting the seeds of the Human Rights Youth Movement in our Republic; and to continue our work we plan to have workshops (2) with directors and teachers of youth clubs of Ulan-Ude along with continuing to work with the teenagers in our society.