Andrea on learning perspective

This past weekend was amazing. Friday afternoon we took off for Goedgedacht, an olive farm about an hour outside Cape Town to focus on human rights. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I had an amazing time. Through Africa Unite, about fifty of us – aged 18-30 were brought together on the olive farm for a weekend of workshops that taught us what Human Rights are, about the differences between civil rights, political rights and socioeconomic rights, what a human rights community is, about asylum seekers and refugee status, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and above all – perspective and a sense of community.

Perspective is probably one of the hardest things to ‘learn’ in a classroom because it is so subjective and personal. Rather than something preached in a lecture hall or available on paper in books, I think perspective is something gained by interactions with people we meet and our own first-hand experiences with the world. Spending time talking with, and sharing experiences with people from all over Africa, discussing human rights issues, peoples’ opinions helped all of us grow as people. Conversations and debates we had and helped us look through the world through very different lenses than normal and I think that new mindset and perspective is truly crucial to the study of human rights. That said, I think perspective is necessary, but not totally sufficient for understanding human rights. Just because we understand one another’s situations doesn’t mean we’re now capable of solving all the worlds’ problems.

Avery and Andrea working on a group project

So perhaps the thing that I took away from this weekend (not having taken any human rights courses on campus yet) that was the most enlightening has to do with the nature of studying human rights. It wasn’t totally surprising to me, but I learned that a large majority of human rights is politics, policy and history. Anthropology and sociology explain why we see everything that’s happening in the world around us, and political science, policy and history are relatively didactic arts, but I think the study of human rights is more than the summation of each sub-science. Understanding human rights as an area of study requires not just a wide-breadth of knowledge of all those subjects, it requires an element of empathy, a personal inclination to interfere and challenge the state of our world – and change it for the better. Which is why I think the absence of pressure to participate or perform on an evaluation sculpted the perfect weekend for us to realize the community we had around us – it was relaxing, beautiful, and inspiring – but above all, I felt the more connected to everyone else on the trip than ever before.

Andrea is called up to receive her Human Rights Training Certificate.

I really do think our program attracts a unique group of students. Though we’re all very different people, I think there really is a unifying attitude toward life that we all share (whether we knew it before we embarked or not). I can say my fascination with human rights, and inspiration to change the world has only grown exponentially during my time here – and we’re only a third of the way through the program. My perspective has changed – I see everything differently than I did six weeks ago, and though I’m still the same person I was before – passionate about basically everything and eager to get going and do things... I’ve been humbled by a lot of what I’ve seen here and the magnitude and scope of issues facing South Africa and the world, and at the beginning I wanted to attack each issue I came across, but I’ve come to realize that there are way too many issues for any one person to tackle or solve alone – and though logical, it was depressing to realize. Which is why this past weekend was so amazing for me. I realized that everyone in this program is hoping to make a dent and help solve problems that plague our world. We’re all eager and passionate people and it was heartening to realize there was a community of people right around me with whom I share more than I realized.

Summarizing the weekend, what I learned and how I feel is complicated, but essentially, I’ve learned that I’ve been surrounded by a group of people all along that I can go far with. It truly was an inspiring weekend and I can already see that what I learned is affecting my outlook on everything I do now and my plans for the future.