We have learned that YouTube and social media are learning spaces where many viewers come to ask questions. Human Rights Watch is the leading human rights organization in the world and as such we are answering human rights questions that resonate with viewers and highlight our work and mission.
Human Rights 101 is a short, animated, YouTube video series that explains the basics of human rights. Episodes answer simple questions such as What are Human Rights? What is the right to Health? What is Freedom of speech? The series is designed to be ever green and informative. As well as distributing the videos online, we produced them to be used as toolkit to teach school children around the world about human rights. We created eleven episodes so far, each answering a human rights question relevant to our work.
Just after releasing a few episodes of the series, we started noticing that the series was being embedded (placed) in educational/instructional websites. Some of these websites are chisholm.edu.au, arizona.edu, bsc.edu, springlakeparkschools.org, and a few others. This tells us that the content is highly desirable for informational/educational purposes.
Our partner, HRW Student Task Force (“STF”), further affirms this point. STF has found the series to be extremely helpful. They have shared the videos with more than 1,000 current and alumni STF students, teachers, and supporters and posted the series link on STF’s website. STF also sent the videos to HRE USA, a national network of human rights educators. HRE sent the series in their monthly newsletter to their network, which is approximately 300+ additional people.
