CRISP and EdCamp are sure that human rights education in Ukraine should be facilitated through spreading new tools to deal with the topic at schools. Simulation games method is a perfect way to teach about complex issues in an interactive and easy-to-understand way. During the first year of this two-year-long project, we have already involved a big pool of teachers and civil society actors, as well as hundreds of their student. Even more educators and activists will be engaged in 2021, and thousands of students will experience the method. We are working in close cooperation with local stakeholders and have a political support from the side of Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.
Project Goals
SIMschool aims to increase respect towards human rights and basic freedoms in Ukraine and foster democratic and tolerant society by empowering Ukrainian schoolteachers with relevant knowledge and practical skills on how to create and facilitate simulation games as a sustainable and interactive tool.
Before the target groups act as multipliers, they need to have a clear understanding of human rights themselves, thus the project included an introduction into the topic and was built up on the needs of the actors involved.
Target Groups
To the target groups of SIMschool belong:
- 225 teachers form different regions of Ukraine actively engaged in secondary schools and eager to gain new tools for human rights education;
- 75 civil society activists involved in the reform “New Ukrainian School” or eager to increase their engagement in this field;
- 3000 school students taking part in the simulation games facilitated by the trained teachers.
Activities
The direct target group – 15 teachers and 5 civil society actors – gathered in 2020 for several Trainings of Trainers both offline in Ukraine and in online format. Their goal during these sessions was to create a toolkit with 3 modules:
- Introduction to non-formal education, human rights and non-discrimination;
- Exercises on human rights adapted for Ukrainian context;
- Simulation games on human rights for 5-11th grades.
Besides that, our participants have conduced beta-testing of the developed toolkit for human rights education in September-October 2020. In 2021, we have started organization of online and offline workshops and roundtables to explain how to use the toolkit. Participants of these events will then use the developed toolkit in the educational process and share the results (January-October 2021).
The team is formed with attention to the different representation by regional affiliation, age, positions, subjects of teaching.
Throughout the project, the team members will receive the following:
- certificate of the developers of simulation games and coaches on the method of their implementation in the educational process;
- indication of the authorship in the final version (online and printed versions) of the toolkit;
- non-competitive invitation to participate in EdCamp Ukraine 2021 events;
- advisory support for further development and implementation of simulation games on other topics by CRISP.
