Education Committee Update

MARL's mandate has always been to educate individuals on the need to be active participants in the protection of their essential human rights. To support this direction, MARL is very excited to announce that we are in the process of designing two high school education programs for implementation over the next two years.

The programs will be specifically designed to provide direct assistance to schools, teachers and students. In year one, the focus will be to develop and provide resources in the form of material, strategies and presenters that support the new Grade 9 Social Studies curriculum which is currently being piloted in our high schools. MARL will be targeting human rights issues, in particular those that pertain to the Manitoba landscape.

The second program will be to establish social justice groups in our high schools. MARL's role will be to facilitate and provide resources to the school teams to research various human rights issues that are impacting our society. Over the course of approximately 6 months, the teams will design projects that they can actively research and provide substantiated information to our community on our advancement of human rights. We are planning to showcase their findings and recommendations at a year end event for the community.

We are very please to announce that Sue Hemphill has been hired to develop, implement and monitor the programs. Sue is a highly visible consultant within the human rights community and brings with her a vast array of experiences to draw from. We are looking forward to working with her.

We are entering a very exciting chapter in our history. We will be forging sustainable relationships with teachers and students and reaching into communities to provide a voice on human rights issues.

We would like to thank all individuals that have been instrumental in conceptualizing these programs.