Date and Time: December 1
st, 2023, 9:00 am to 3:30 pm
Location: Saint Mary’s University, Room Loyola 188, Sobey Building.
903 Robie St, Halifax, NS (B3H 3C2)
Cost: Free (lunch provided)
The Canadian Red Cross Humanitarian Education Training is a professional development program intended for Canadian educators who wish to strengthen capacity to help students 13-18 years of age better understand principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), justice, human rights, and humanitarian action.
The current crises in Ukraine and Sudan, and other armed conflicts around the world, have made conversations around the realities of war and armed conflict ever more pressing. Without the tools or outlets for proper reflection, many of us, students included, feel somewhat ineffective and despondent.
Humanitarian education activities in the classroom can help youth develop critical thinking skills about the violence they are witnessing on social and traditional media, and in some cases first-hand.
In this training, participants will explore classroom activities that introduce the principles of IHL and related issues through the eyes of youth themselves:
- Issues include human rights, war crimes, refugees, child soldiers, gender-based violence, attacks on civilians and infrastructure, and environmental destruction due to war.
- Participants will be introduced to the interactive resource Forced to Fight, the accompanying Humanitarian Education Guidebook, the Exploring Humanitarian Law toolkit, and the Canada and Conflict manual.
- Participants will learn to implement practical activities and facilitate generative conversations on IHL-related issues using these resources.
- The content of the training complements academic subjects such as global issues, social studies, history, law, and language arts. Curriculum maps tailored to the Atlantic region will be provided for most subject areas.
By providing experiential learning opportunities through activities and trained Canadian Red Cross personnel as well as other field practitioners, this training ensures a valuable and dynamic professional development experience! This training will be conducted in English but all above-mentioned resources are also available in French.
Participants will receive a certificate of completion at the end of the training.
If you are not a teacher and wish to attend or if you have questions, please send an email to
fanny.dagenais-dion@redcross.ca.