On February 7 and 8, the seminar on preparation of guides of the traveling educational exhibition “Everyone Has the Right to Know Their Rights” was held at the municipal institution “Secondary school no. 30” of Kamianske City Council in the Kamianske City, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The participants of the seminar were students and teachers of schools of the city.

The seminar was held in a relaxed atmosphere. During it, participants have seen about 25 stands of the exhibition, containing statements of famous people and young activists, who defend human rights, as well as photos and drawings, information about historical facts, quotations from documents and decisions of international bodies for human rights, and more that allows a wide field for discussion and for informing about human rights.

Generally, the material of the stands of the exhibition consists of three main parts:

The first block includes philosophy, history, and evolution of human rights. Information on the panels of this block is aimed at disclosing the content of the basic provisions of the human rights concept. The material of the panels was supported by images of historical figures and events, links to historical documents, and quotes of prominent personalities.

The second block is dedicated to specific standards of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Each panel contains expressions of young people, a short context of certain notions about the European Court of Human Rights, the explanation of the law, steps to protect human rights, visual objects that can reveal the meaning of the term.

The third block is specific and tells about the Rights of the Child: about the understanding of the history and evolution of the Rights of the Child, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The first panel depicts the history of the formation of the Rights of the Child, the second panel reveals the essence of the concept of the Rights of the Child, and the third one contains the information about the Convention.

The traveling educational exhibition “Everyone Has the Right to Know Their Rights”, as well as the guideline to work with it, were developed in 2011 by the NGO “MART” (UHHRU member organization) MART http://mart-ngo.org.ua/ua with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation http://www.irf.ua/i using expert materials. It was prepared under the action plan of the Ukraine-wide Educational Program “We Understand Human Rights” http://edu.helsinki.org.ua/, as one of the steps to respond to the need for a systematic approach to human rights education. It enables to use these products as auxiliary materials for learning and encourage discussion of human rights issues.

NGO ‘MART’ is a non-political non-profit organization, focusing on civil society development, as well as human rights education, monitoring of human rights observance, public interests advocacy through mechanisms of human rights protection.

This model of a traveling exhibition is a methodological tool for human rights education, but its strength is that it allows you to attract the attention of a wide range of people to the problems related to human rights, to mobilize local communities, and to influence formal education. Also, its feature is that the excursions to the exhibition are guided by young senior secondary school students, students who have received special training on a peer-to-peer basis. The educational tour lasts 40-60 minutes and includes both direct information and training unit. It discusses the most important human rights issues and possibilities of settling with visitors. Thus, the exhibition becomes a kind of platform for discussions on human rights and real issues of concern to each visitor and the community as a whole.

The seminar on guides preparation of the traveling educational exhibition “Everyone Has the Right to Know Their Rights” was organized within the framework of initiatives implemented by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union the Human Rights First project supported by Global Affairs Canada and the US Agency for International development (USAID) Human Rights in Action programs, a part of the national educational program “We Understand Human Rights”.