Rights Final Assignment

We've looked at rights very broadly the last few weeks, briefly exploring issues of refugees, child soldiers and poverty in general as seen in other parts of the world. Most recently we compared the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with Canada's Charter of Rights and freedoms to start thinking about rights closer to home. Through our responses we discussed the idea of how people in troubled situations share stories to build hope for a better world.

The idea of Human Rights was created to try and encourage people to actively make the world better than it is for all people.

In the spirit of all of those ideas, our final project in this exploration of rights and freedoms will ask you to look at your own communities.

As we saw early on, there are lots of bad things happening in the world all the time. It also became clear that a lot of people in our classes feel bad about those things, but don't really know what to do to help, and don't really feel all that connected to the issues.

The best problems/issues/ideas to work on are the ones that mean the most to you, and those are usually the ones that you see or are somehow a part of every day.

People in Canada have a lot of freedoms and privileges, but that does not mean that our lives feel magical and perfect, and it is hard to feel like helping someone we don't even know when there are things happening at home that take up more of your attention.

Your Final Assignment:

Inspired by the Aviva Community Fund, I want you to imagine that a charitable organization is offering to give money to community projects in our area. They want to give the money to specific projects, however, projects that support a community and its people. They will not support any projects that are illegal, or that remove rights from certain groups of people to give them to others

Building a better world doesn't just mean working in Africa or Haiti. There are things about our own communities that could be better. This is your chance to share your story and your ideas: start thinking about how a difference could be made.

Step one: Outline

1) What community do you feel most attached to? In this case I'm talking about a group of people, but also a place. Which out of your school, city, town, other, do you feel the strongest attachment to?

2) What do people in that community need to make their lives better? (What are you entitled to? What is your right?)

3) What do the people in that community want? (What privileges do you have? What privileges do you deserve?)

4) What project could help fill these needs and wants? (be specific, where do you think the money could do the most good?)

5) What are the most important details of this project if you want to get other people to support it?

Step Two:

Once this outline is complete, You will be asked to write a very brief (100 word) introduction to what your project plans to do for your chosen community. Try to use as much detail as possible in that 100 words.

Steps 1&2 will be due: Monday November 28, 2011

Step Three:

The Real Aviva Community fund is a competition; once all introductions and outlines have been submitted, they will be put on display in the classroom and the top six ideas will be chosen.

Step Four:

Each of those six top ideas will then create a powerpoint and oral presentation Illustrating why their idea is the one most deserving of winning the top prize.

Clearer instructions on steps three and four will be given at the start of next week