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Workshops

In order to pass and then effectively implement a human rights treaty, your coalition must be familiar with the impact a human rights vision and the framework can have on your community. You will need human rights education to provide your coalition with this knowledge.

To provide the skills you need to accomplish your goals and reach the public, you should:

• Have an initial one-day workshop on CEDAW for potential task force members.
• Develop a training team and a standard workshop.
• Conduct a 2-3 hour CEDAW workshop every month in order to continually broaden and deepen the coalition and to educate those who might be involved.
• Provide 45-minute presentations on CEDAW to relevant groups in your community.

The workshops must examine:

• The relevance of human rights in the United States, and more importantly, in your community;
• What CEDAW says in articles 1 through 16;
• The history of CEDAW;
• The challenges facing ratification;
• How CEDAW can be used to change existing conditions.

In San Francisco, WILD conducted a two-day workshop on CEDAW and its relevance for women. It was out of this workshop that our coalition and a commitment to passing CEDAW in San Francisco developed. But if we could do it again, we would have a one-day initial workshop in order to encourage those with tighter time schedules to attend.

The coalition then held monthly four-hour workshops on CEDAW to increase the number of individuals familiar with CEDAW and its potential impact on San Francisco. The coalition invited other local activists and government officials to these workshops to increase community and government support for CEDAW implementation in San Francisco. We continually added members to our coalition from these meetings.

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