St. John's Training Seminars, August 24th and 25th-29th, 2009

D.R.P.I. Canada, in collaboration with N.G.O. and government partners, held two training events in St. John's Newfoundland related to disability rights and monitor training.

Photo by: Daphne Johnson

The first event was a one-day workshop on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, funded by Canadian Heritage. The workshop was attended by over 60 participants and included presentations from a series of local and international human rights advocates and researchers. The attendees agreed that the event, which allowed them to build their knowledge on economic, social and cultural rights, to be a great success.

Eleven of the participants from the workshop on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights continued with disability rights monitoring training on August 25th. This intensive, five-day training event emerged as a collaboration between D.R.P.I. Canada and the local Independent Living Resource Centre. The seminar was designed to build local capacity in communities across Canada for monitoring human rights of people with disabilities. As a part of their training, participants and organizers shared experiences of disability-based discrimination and instances where human rights were denied. The training also focused on teaching and practicing interviewing skills considered critical to monitoring individual experiences of human rights among people with disabilities. By the end of the training, participants were comfortable in their ability to perform interviews to monitor human rights in their communities.

The St. John's monitoring training seminar was the last in a series of training seminars held by D.R.P.I. Canada to train people with disabilities to monitor human rights abuses in their communities. The other training seminars were held in Toronto, Quebec City and Vancouver.

View photos taken during the training here.