Opinion/Brown: Human Rights Academy empowers Cape Cod teens to improve civic engagement
There’s enough bad news around, I thought maybe you might appreciate something more encouraging. Fortunately, I have just the thing. In 2008, our Barnstable County Human Rights Commission founded the Human Rights Academy (HRA) where students can meet twice a year to learn about community needs and service on the Cape and to share what they are doing with like-minded students from other schools. At the fall meeting, students decide on projects to pursue throughout the year in their schools' Human Rights Clubs, and at the Spring Academy Session they report back their results.
During the HRA gathering last spring, the academy provided a lot of open space for kids to describe what the pandemic has done to them, their families and their schools. The most powerful message we took from hearing them was how they felt COVID had stripped a lot of civility and compassion from their school cultures. People were edgier, angrier and felt more entitled to lash out when things weren’t doing well.
As they — and we — are fully aware, this loss of civility afflicts our country generally. Schools across the country are losing faculty and administrators at accelerated rates. Even sports referees and bus drivers are hard to find. Last summer, many retailers across the Cape had to post signs asking their customers to be patient and not abuse their staff. It's likely you've experienced some of that incivility yourself.
So the HRA mentors listened to the kids and partnered up with Capemediation.org to design a program that will train this fall’s academy attendees in some basic conflict-resolution strategies. The kids trained in the program emerge with strengthened listening skills and empathy for other's feelings and points of view. The outcomes? A reduction in displays of anger and altercations — and just and fair outcomes for all concerned.
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Cape Mediation trains people for the Massachusetts courts system as well as for school and corporate life. Students and staff from Nauset Regional High School, who have completed Cape Mediation’s Youth Conflict Resolution pilot training program, will facilitate the academy listening circles.
As they’ll tell you, the mediation goal is not victory, or squashing someone — but a path forward that all concerned are willing to live with. Far better than having school staff try to keep the peace, trained students are always on the scene and can defuse situations long before adults can hear a problem and get to where things have escalated.
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Over the years, Cape Cod has benefitted from in-school peer mediation and conflict-resolution projects, and anti-bullying programs. In one case, a school project led to a Statehouse visit, culminating in the legislators using student-generated language in their Anti-Bullying bill.
Some HRA projects have benefitted refugees and victims of violence and trafficking. Others have funded water projects in Africa. For over a decade, the Shelter from the Storm benefit concerts gathered the best singers, dancers and musicians from high schools across the county for an annual benefit performance. All told, our students have raised well over a quarter million dollars for Cape Cod veterans, those without homes and victims of domestic violence and addiction. Such civic action transforms the students as well as our communities.
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You know you hear a lot about kids these days. You get the eye roll, probably not terribly different from how ancient Egyptians worried that their kids weren't growing up right. Well, I spent 42 years of my life with kids. I've seen first hand their idealism and their hunger for honesty and a chance to make a difference.
For over 34 years, (14 years with the Human Rights Academy) I’ve worked in collaboration with teachers and students from all over the Cape. With money Cape Cod kids have raised, we've seen an opioid addiction clinic for teenagers open at Duffy Health Center; we've seen 10 living units rebuilt at the Safe Harbor shelter for battered women and children. A single concert fed everyone at Faith Family Kitchen for a year.
Students around the United States have been volunteering over a billion hours of community service every year. The Human Rights Academy is one of the wonderful ways that idealism takes shape around here. I thought it might brighten your day if you knew that.
Lawrence Brown is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times. Email him at columnresponse@gmail.com.
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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod Human Rights Academy teaches teens how to resolve conflicts
