International student groups gear up for Right 2 Education Week

Earlier this month, we hosted a brilliant group of students from Norway for a 2 day workshop at Birzeit University. Here’s a bit more from them about their campaign, their visit to the West Bank – and their exciting plans for Right 2 Education Week in Norway:

Til Palestina (“To Palestine”) is an organization established in 2012 by Norwegian students with former volunteering experience from the Middle East. We organize meetings and courses in Norway and tours to the West Bank for Norwegian students. Til Palestina believes that the best way to get knowledge and raise awareness about the Palestinian cause is through meeting Palestinians and getting first-hand experience with the situation in Palestine. Our tours have a humanitarian focus, where visiting peace building projects and positive grass root initiatives are important aims. To achieve Til Palestina’s goals a ten day program is arranged and the students visit different cities and places around the West Bank, like Hebron, South Hebron Hills, Beit Ommar, Jericho, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah.

At the end of Til Palestina’s trip in September/October 2013 we arranged a workshop with the Right 2 Education Campaign at Birzeit University. During the two-day workshop the Norwegian students got to know Birzeit students, volunteers in the Right 2 Education Campaign and other international volunteers. Two professors at Birzeit also joined the workshop and held an educational and very inspiring lecture on how it feels for them to teach and work in Palestine, the challenges they meet daily and how they deal with them. The professors shared thoughts and reflections about the importance of international solidarity. Solidarity is shared values. With our Right 2 Education Week in Norway we will support the campaign and the struggle for education for Palestinian youth. The human right to education is an important tool to achieve other human rights and in that way strengthens Palestinian society.

The workshop at Birzeit was inspiring and gave the Norwegian group valuable information about the situation for Palestinian students. It also prepared us for arranging a “Right 2 Education Week” at our own university. Back in Norway we are now continuing to develop what we started to work on at Birzeit and look forward to seeing a “Right 2 Education Week” with different activities, meetings, role plays, movie screenings and discussions at our university in Trondheim in November. Our main goal for the week is to raise awareness and spread the information we got through the workshop with our new Palestinian friends among our fellow students in Norway.

If you are interested in organising a similar trip for your solidarity group, we would love to hear from you. Please contact us on right2education.bzu@gmail.com.

Join the growing number of universities partnering with us for Right 2 Education Week (11-15 November 2013) by organising your own event.

Show your support by joining the facebook event, following us on Twitter and telling everyone you know. Use the hashtag #R2Eweek!