Program:
RFK Awards
- Budget:
-
$150,000
- Category:
-
Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy
- Population Served:
-
Program Description:
<p>The RFK Center amplifies the work of activists,
authors, journalists, and students to a global audience through several annual
awards.</p><div>The <strong>RFK Human Rights Award</strong> was established in 1984 by his eldest child, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, to honor courageous and innovative individuals striving for social justice throughout the world. To support a recipient's cause, the RFK Center provides a monetary contribution and a six-year partnership, through <strong>Partners in Human Rights</strong>.</div><div> </div><div>The <strong>RFK Book Award</strong> honors the book that most forcefully reflects Robert
Kennedy's priorities: concern for the poor and the powerless, the struggle for
even-handed justice, and a remedy for disparities of power and opportunity.</div><div> </div><div>The
<strong>RFK Journalism</strong> <strong>Award </strong>celebrates excellence in investigative journalism on a
wide spectrum of social justice issues.</div><div> </div><div>The <strong>RFK High School and University Journalism Award</strong> recognizes the achievements of European youth
who investigate human rights issues and advocate for change.</div><div> </div><div>The <strong>RFK Ripple of Hope Award</strong> lauds leaders of the international business, entertainment, and
activist communities who demonstrate commitment to social change.</div><p> </p>
Program Long-Term Success:
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Program:
Partners for Human Rights
- Budget:
-
$1,400,000
- Category:
-
Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy
- Population Served:
-
Other Named Groups
Program Description:
<div>The RFK Center’s human rights advocacy programs focus on the power of the individual, working through alliances and organizations, to generate change.</div><div> </div><div>The only international human rights program of its kind, <strong>RFK Partners for Human Rights</strong> forges multi-year partnerships with recipients of the annual Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Grounded in listening to and serving the real needs of the Laureates, RFK Partners’ unique model—with its six-year, intensive collaboration, and its ability to mobilize powerful allies—is one of the most effective ways to advance long-term, systemic change for communities across the globe.</div><div> </div><div>Since 1984, the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights has worked with 43 Laureates from 26 countries.</div>
Program Long-Term Success:
There is an existing human rights crisis wherever the RFK Center partners with a human rights activist. Through <strong>Partners for Human Rights</strong>, the RFK Center takes a <u>human rights based approach</u> to addressing this crisis. This means developing the capacities of individuals and small groups to claim their rights. It can also mean developing the capacities of states and governments to meet their obligations to the people. A long-term success for <strong>Partners for Human Rights</strong> is to do either or both of these, leading to a more just and peaceful world.
Program Short-Term Success:
For each partnership, in the immediate and near-future the RFK Center strives to assist the laureate in elevating their struggle to world-wide attention. RFK Center staff members work with laureates to identify and make progress towards their most crucial, immediate needs.
Program Success Monitored by:
At the beginning of a partnership, RFK staff members meet with to outline an intensive, six-year plan with well defined goals, obstacles, strategies, and possible allies. Throughout the plan's execution, RFK staff members are in constant contact with their human rights partners around the world.
Program Success Examples:
<p>PROMOTING MINORITY RIGHTS IN UGANDA</p><p>In 2011, the RFK Center began working with Mr. Frank Mugisha, a leading voice for the rights of the LGBTI community in Uganda, where sexual minorities are persecuted, and a proposed law would impose the death penalty on homosexuals in certain cases.</p><p>PROVIDING WATER TO HAITI</p><p>After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the RFK Center pressured the U.S. government and financial institutions to release Inter-Development Bank loans which brought clean water to the town of Saint-Marc.</p><p>PROTECTING INDIGENOUS RIGHTS IN MEXICO</p><p>In 2010, the RFK Center joined with activists to protect indigenous communities in rural Mexico by rallying Congress to uphold human rights provisions of the Mérida Initiative.</p><p>ADVOCATING FOR WESTERN SAHARA</p><p>In 2009, Moroccan authorities blocked Aminatou Haidar, a leading activist for the independence of Western Sahara, from entering her home country. The RFK Center worked with Moroccan authorities and rallied diplomatic corps, neighboring governments, the US State Department, the press, and international advocates to bring global attention to the situation, stressing the need for a human rights monitoring mechanism in Western Sahara and to protect her rights and secure her safe return home.</p><p>REBUILDING NEW ORLEANS</p><p>The RFK Center worked with activists to block plans to turn the hurricane-ravaged Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans into a golf course. When the U.S. government sought to stop further funding for Hurricane Katrina recovery, the RFK Center helped bring 400 residents to the halls of Congress to advocate for their homes and livelihoods. Within weeks, the president announced additional recovery funds.</p><p>WINNING A LIVING WAGE FOR FIELD WORKERS</p><p>With support from the RFK Center, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers won a penny-per-pound wage increase for Florida’s tomato pickers, substantially improving the lives of thousands of field workers.</p>
Program:
Speak Truth To Power
- Budget:
-
$570,000
- Category:
-
Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy
- Population Served:
-
Youth/Adolescents only (14 - 19 years)
-
Children Only (5 - 14 years)
-
Adults
Program Description:
<div>Speak Truth To Power is a multi-faceted global initiative that tells the story of courageous human rights activists around the world to educate students and others about human rights, and urge them to take action. Issues range from slavery and environmental activism to religious self-determination and political participation. S<em>peak Truth To Power</em> began as a book written by Kerry Kennedy and evolved into a play<em> </em>by the award-winning
playwright Ariel Dorfman, a photo exhibition by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Eddie Adams, and
is now a human rights education curriculum.</div><div> </div><div>This educational program employs the fascinating stories of human rights activists from around
the world to bring history to life and educate students of all ages about human rights, urging them to champion a more just and
peaceful world. STTP lesson plans often tell the story of ordinary people who
found inspiring reserves of strength for heroic action. The program delivers credible
role models, particularly for students grappling with family, scholastic, or economic
challenges.</div>
<p>Speak Truth To Power has been
disseminated to hundreds of thousands of students in Africa, Asia, Europe and
the United States. In Italy, STTP curriculum is being taught in every province and is compulsory
in some schools. In collaboration with Amnesty International, the U.S. version
of the curriculum has been widely distributed throughout North America. An updated online curriculum, launched in December 2010 in partnership with New York State United Teachers, now
includes 31 teacher-developed lesson plans for students in grades six (6)
through twelve (12).</p>
Program Long-Term Success:
<div>There are four roles a person can play in an instance of injustice: the victim, the perpetrator, the bystander, and the defender. STTP encourages its audience to become a defender and abandon the other roles.</div>
Program Short-Term Success:
<div>Speak Truth To Power empowers and instills empathy, hope, and conviction in its audience. For students, it helps them to identify injustice or inhumane treatment in their own communities through analogy to the examples they learn in STTP.</div>
Program Success Monitored by:
RFK Center staff members meet with school officials and teachers to review their experiences with Speak Truth To Power. Staff members also use online surveys and the Human Rights Temperature tool from the University of Minnesota's Human Rights Resource Center.
Program Success Examples:
<div>A recent implementation of Speak Truth To Power saw a group of young students form a "Defender's Club," where they made anti-bullying posters, raised more than $1,500 for local poverty programs and $600 for the Zanmi Beni orphanage in Haiti, and exchanged community service ideas with students in New York. School administrators reported an increase in third-party reports of bullying - that students are beginning to abandon the role of the bystander when they witness bullying in the school.</div>
Program:
Other Programs
- Budget:
-
$2,100,000
- Category:
-
Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy
- Population Served:
-
Program Description:
<p><strong>Health eVillages</strong> is a healthcare and human rights advocacy consortium, which aims to bring mobile medical reference and decision support technology to clinicians fighting to save lives in underserved regions worldwide. Healthcare professionals in disadvantaged areas will be provided with new and refurbished mobile phones and handheld devices that do not require Internet access and are preloaded with clinical decision support reference tools, to ensure caregivers and patients have safe access to updated medical references in remote locations. All devices include drug guides, medical alerts, journal summaries and references from over 50 medical publishers’ resources powered by Skyscape.com, Inc.</p><div> </div><div>The <strong>RFK Compass</strong> program works with institutional investors to advance a discussion of the connections among investment performance, fiduciary duty, and public interest issues to optimize risk-adjusted rates of returns and address current and future global challenges. There is a conventional view that fiduciaries can make investment decisions based solely on narrow economic criteria. This view omits critical risk variables, including human rights, economic, environmental, social, and governance factors, that can materially affect sustainable investment returns. Public interest considerations can be crucial elements of investment risk management.</div><div> </div><div>The <strong>RFK Juvenile Justice Collaborative</strong> joins forces with Massachusetts’ RFK Children Action Corps, founder of an innovative model for alternatives to juvenile incarceration, to bring the practice of direct service and the power of advocacy together to strengthen the rights of juveniles and urges more effective policies for adjudicated youth transitioning back into their communities. </div>
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