The Diplomat
A school in the municipality of Cabezón de Pisuerga, in Valladolid, has been awarded the V Ibero-American Prize for Human Rights Education Óscar Arnulfo Romero for its work in rights and duties education among its students through stories and children’s literature.
Last Tuesday, September 27, the winning projects of the international phase of the IV Ibero-American Prize for Human Rights Education Óscar Arnulfo Romero, promoted by the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) and the SM Foundation, were announced in Santiago de Chile.
Among the winners is the initiative Déjame que te cuente. La fábrica de los derechos (Let me tell you. The factory of rights), which “has transformed the school in the municipality of Cabezón de Pisuerga, a town of just over 3,000 inhabitants in the province of Valladolid, into a veritable literary factory where children create, read and learn about these issues,” the OEI said in a press release. The project, which involves 320 students and 28 teachers, works from kindergarten to sixth grade and seeks to bring the little ones closer to concepts such as Human Rights or the 2030 Agenda from an early age with the playful and close language provided by children’s literature.
Representatives of the institution traveled to Santiago de Chile, together with the other 31 finalist projects from the different Ibero-American countries participating in the 4th Seminar on Human Rights Education, to receive the award from the OEI Secretary General, Mariano Jabonero, and Mayte Ortiz, Director General of the SM Foundation. The project received an award of US$5,000, which will be invested in the growth and improvement of the initiative.
In the same category, the Intercultural Bilingual Education project for deaf students with high levels of vulnerability, implemented by the Chilean school Dr. Jorge Otte Gablery, was also recognized. In the non-formal education category, the Sol en Casa Foundation of Bolivia, with a therapeutic initiative for children with intellectual disabilities, and the Luceros project: guaranteeing identity, documentation and human rights, developed by The Dominican Republic Education and Mentoring (DREAM) Project of the Dominican Republic, also won awards. The honorable mention went to the Honduran initiative Todos somos migrantes, todos somos humanos (We are all migrants, we are all human), by the Instituto Gubernamental Polivalente Roberto Micheletti Baín.
The Óscar Arnulfo Romero Ibero-American Prize for Human Rights Education is awarded every two years in honor of St. Oscar Romero, a Salvadoran priest who was assassinated on March 24, 1980 while officiating mass, and canonized by the Catholic Church in 2018. He is remembered throughout the region as a staunch defender of human rights. The award, in its previous editions, has had winning projects from Brazil, Colombia, Peru, El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala and Puerto Rico, and has so far received more than 1,500 nominations from all countries in the Ibero-American space.
