Rights Now! has presented workshops across New York City at schools and youth community organizations since 2016.
For example:
On March 24, 2018, Legal Momentum’s Rights Now! Peer Educators facilitated a workshop with Women for Afghan Women's Afghan Youth Rising! Program. Women for Afghan Women provides life-saving programs and services for women and children across Afghanistan who have endured human rights violations, including forced and underage marriage, rape, forced prostitution, unlawful imprisonment, and barred access to education and employment. Ten young women attended this workshop, which addressed issues of sex-based discrimination. Following the workshop, the Afghan Youth Rising! Program Coordinator wrote us, “Thank you so much for facilitating the workshop on Saturday with our Afghan Youth Rising! I could already tell that the girls felt empowered and inspired.”
On April 18, 2018, our facilitated a workshop with Covenant House's Mother/Child Program. The Mother/Child program was created to help homeless, young, single mothers and pregnant teenagers secure a brighter, more stable future for themselves and their babies. Six young women attended; each was either pregnant or accompanied by a baby (as young as four months!) or a toddler. Legal Momentum's Executive Director, Carol Moody, attended and sat at the table, participating in many of the activities. Participants learned how to define the terms power, privilege, oppression, stereotype, and discrimination. They shared stories about how these terms apply to their own lives. In their feedback, the young women expressed how much they valued the workshop experience, saying they “loved this workshop,” and “this was a great workshop.”
After the April 2018 Covenant House presentation, Rights Now! Peer Educators returned three more times in May 2018 to present on sex-based discrimination, healthy relationships and teen dating violence, and social media and cyber violence. Each workshop was well attended, lively, and a resounding success. Covenant House staff provided the following testimonial on the four Rights Now! workshops that Legal Momentum presented:
"We would like to thank Rights Now! for the groups they were able to facilitate with the ladies in our mother and child program. You all did an amazing job with introducing your topics and keeping the ladies engaged in spite of the crying babies. I believe it was really helpful that your activities involved discussions but also had the youth physically become engaged in the activity. The ladies all had positive feedback when attending your groups. I believe that we all (Covenant House Staff included) were able to take information we learned from the group that we might not have known coming into the group. I don’t have any recommendations. You all worked well together whether it was 2 or 3 facilitators and each bought something new to the group. Again we thank you for the opportunity to come together and learn as a group."
