During the 2023 Winter Session, the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs piloted a new interdisciplinary undergraduate course in human rights in collaboration with the UBC Human Rights Collective and the UBC Office of Regional and International Community Engagement. PPGA 391A: Human Rights in a Globalized World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Practical Applications offered a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to gain hands-on experience in human rights work. The course took an interdisciplinary lens to explore the theory and practice of human rights work in a globalized world. Students learned the opportunities and impediments in rights-based work and participated in experiential learning activities, including community-partner group projects coordinated by ORICE.
To better understand the strengths and difficulties of this experiential learning component, we interviewed Lolita Persad, one of the undergraduate students who successfully completed and excelled in their community-based project with the Aboriginal Housing Management Association. The Aboriginal Housing Management Association is a For Indigenous By Indigenous authority that seeks to advance housing rights for Indigenous peoples. AHMA members manage Indigenous housing units and funds, as well as provide trauma-informed, culturally safe housing.
Lolita Persad is a third-year Political Science student. In this field, she is most interested in political theory, political philosophy, and international relations. She likes to explore the big-picture ideas related to Political Science. Lolita joins us for a Q&A to discuss her community partner project and her experience as a student in the PPGA 391A course.
What interested you the most about joining a course with an experiential learning project alongside a community partner?
I think just the overall uniqueness of the course itself, the fact that you don’t really get to see this kind of experiential learning coupled with a lecture-based environment very often. And so that drew me to the course because I thought it was pretty singular in that regard. I also think working with human rights and local organizations was a very powerful factor. So I thought it was a really good opportunity.
“I think just the overall uniqueness of the course itself, the fact that you don’t really get to see this kind of experiential learning coupled with a lecture-based environment very often.”
Who was your community partner? Can you describe the project you worked on?
I worked with the Aboriginal Housing Management Association or AHMA. They are a For Indigenous By Indigenous housing provider and authority in Canada. They do a lot of different kinds of work related to providing Indigenous housing. For example, they distribute funds and compile research into reports and create housing strategies. Their focus is advocating for the lack of affordable and adequate housing for Indigenous peoples across BC. Regarding our specific project, we were looking to create a report or a body of work to support a human rights claim being made against the federal government and, specifically, the Ministry of Housing. The report outlined the government’s lack of will to provide adequate housing for Indigenous peoples across the country. Therefore, my group members and I were asked to read “Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls” and then note instances where Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people had testified that the violence they experienced was related to their housing situation. This included instances where they didn’t have housing, or they had unsafe housing. We noted that, in many cases, inadequate housing was directly correlated to the violence they experienced.
What impact is AHMA seeking to make with this project, and where does your work fit into that?
Right, so AHMA is just one of the Indigenous housing providers working within a larger group to inform a claim of human rights violations against the government, and I think what they’re looking for most with our project is evidence of inadequate housing leading to violence to force appropriate government action. Our part in this was to create an evidence-based report with data collected from personal testimonies within the “Reclaiming Power and Place” document. I think being able to point out exactly where in this massive report people were experiencing unsafe housing and then subsequently experiencing violence was really what AHMA was looking for from us.
What was the most challenging part of the community partner project?
I think a shared sentiment among my group members was that sometimes the project felt a little challenging because we didn’t really know if we were doing the right thing or if we were doing what the community partner actually wanted because this was our first time doing something like this, and oftentimes these questions weren’t resolved until we got towards the end of what we were doing. It seemed uncertain and uncomfortable at times, but I think it’s just the nature of working within the field of policymaking. In terms of resolving the feelings of uncertainty and confusion, I think there was a lot of growth in our group. We had to acknowledge that it was sometimes uncomfortable and work through that. Our instructor, Tamara Baldwin, had often reassured us that the project would feel non-linear and that that was just a part of the process.
“It seemed uncertain and uncomfortable at times, but I think it’s just the nature of working within the field of policymaking. In terms of resolving the feelings of uncertainty and confusion, I think there was a lot of growth in our group. We had to acknowledge that it was sometimes uncomfortable and work through that. Our instructor, Tamara Baldwin, had often reassured us that the project would feel non-linear and that that was just a part of the process.”
What aspects of the community partner project did you find most exciting?
As students in regular lecture-based courses, we take a backseat in our learning. I don’t think this can be said for this course because even if my learning experience sometimes felt uncertain, it was a really good opportunity for growth and to test my limits and capacities in terms of the work that I could produce. It was really inspiring to take the lead in my learning. Of course to do meaningful work and hopefully make a difference was incredibly exciting as well.
“It was a really good opportunity for growth and to test my limits and capacities in terms of the work that I could produce. It was really inspiring to take the lead in my learning.”
What skills did you develop or enhance through your participation in this project?
The community partner project was really the first opportunity I had to create something that would be used professionally for an organization. I think producing not just a paper or essay but a professional document is a skill I learned. I know that AHMA hopes to cite the report somewhere publicly or at least use it to inform the human rights claim. Another skill I enhanced was time management. Some of our presentations throughout our project had to be relatively short. Therefore, condensing the entirety of our term-long project into a 15-minute presentation was a skill I acquired.
“The community partner project was really the first opportunity I had to create something that would be used professionally for an organization.”
How did AHMA support a trauma-informed approach to the work? What did you learn about trauma-informed approaches through your project?
Toward the end of our project, the group members and I met with our main contact at AHMA, who led us in this exercise of acknowledging and resolving the discomfort we may have felt when reading the testimonies because they are obviously quite emotionally charged. They taught us how to acknowledge really difficult truths and decide what to hold on to and what not to hold on to because you can’t carry it all. For me, when reading the testimonies, a big part of me wanted to hold on to all the stories because I would never want to deny that this is something that has happened to someone, even if it’s really difficult. But our guides really stressed that you can’t hold it all, so you just hold on to what is yours and your experience and the rest of it, you just have to let it go. I think throughout the project, one thing we tried to do was keep it person-centred. This meant acknowledging that whatever we read about violence wasn’t just data points but the personal stories and lives of people.
“I think throughout the project, one thing we tried to do was keep it person-centred. This meant acknowledging that whatever we read about violence wasn’t just data points but the personal stories and lives of people.”
Based on your experience, what advice would you give to students who might participate in experiential education courses in the future?
I would lean into the change and the uncertainty because it is something unlike anything I have ever experienced. Then I would say don’t try to fit the organization or the partner that you’re working with into your idea of what a class or course or learning should look like because they’re obviously very different environments. Lecture-based courses can be a little limited in that they’re laid out in a very similar way, but when you get into the real world, especially with policy making, it’s not like that at all, as there are a lot of complexities. So I would say lean into that and acknowledge the value of that. Being placed in an unfamiliar situation, I think, is one of the greater opportunities for growth, so welcome it and take into account how the community partner is helping you learn differently because there are a lot of lessons in that.
“Being placed in an unfamiliar situation, I think, is one of the greater opportunities for growth, so welcome it and take into account how the community partner is helping you learn differently because there are a lot of lessons in that.”
Is there anything else you would like to add?
I’m really, really grateful to the partners I worked with on this project, Alessia Montecalvo and Quinn Taylor-Poole, for their support and intelligence. I don’t want to take credit for their amazing work this semester, as this project would not have come to fruition without them.
If you are interested in PPGA 391A and other experiential education courses, follow UBC HRC on Instagram and subscribe to our Newsletter for updates on future opportunities!
About the student
Lolita Persad (she/her)
Lolita is a third-year UBC student majoring in Political Science from Kamloops, British Columbia. She particularly enjoys studying political philosophy and spends her spare time playing the piano and guitar.
About the interviewer
Emma Villalobos (she/her)
Emma Villalobos recently graduated with a B.A. in International Relations from UBC Vancouver. She joined ORICE in the summer of 2023 as a Human Rights Collective program assistant, where she helped develop the HRC Resource Catalog, the Activating Advocacy Speaker Series, and the ICF Conference. Emma is now an ORICE program assistant. In her new position, she is excited to help develop ORICE programs for the upcoming academic year. Originally from Costa Rica, Emma moved to the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) People in 2021, where she has had the privilege of learning, meeting new people, and exploring her new surroundings.