Road to Rights Launches the #MYWorldStreetCampaign

By Ashan Perera, Road to Rights

The Road to Rights (R2R) is a youth-led movement initiated in 2012 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with the intention of promoting human rights education and awareness. It has a wide-spread global network within 14 different countries in Asia and Africa, with chapters in Sri Lanka , Nepal, Bangladesh , India , Pakistan , Nigeria, and Rwanda . Road to Rights launched the MY World Campaign at the 2013 International Youth Day celebration and now is a Global Partner of the campaign. So far R2R has conducted the survey and workshop in schools, institutions, governments and at the grassroots level.

The MY World Street Campaign is a new concept and initiative from R2R to reach out to the general public and create awareness about the campaign rather than collecting votes. Eventually encourage the public to complete the survey either through online or offline methods. The online survey is conducted using iPads, tablets, mobile phones, laptops whereas the offline campaign is paper-based. The campaign is carried out entirely by a set of passionate and enthusiastic young volunteers.

The MY World Street Campaign started on the 1^st of September and will be conducted till 26^th of September. Within the span of almost one month, the period has been split into 4 week intervals, where each week the volunteers will specifically discuss four priorities out of the 16 stating the history, background, relative current issues etc. of each priority. In each week, the volunteers will educate the people they approach on the current situation of these issues and encourage them to share their opinions on the issues:

Week 01 – “Good education”, “Better job opportunities”, “Reliable energy at home”, “Phones and internet access”
Week 02 – “Protection against crime and violence”, “An honest and responsive government”, “Protecting forests, rivers and oceans”, and “Better healthcare”
Week 03 – “Political freedoms”, “Affordable and nutritious food”, “Freedom from discrimination and persecution”, “Action taken on climate change”
Week 04 – “Equality between men and women”, “Better transport and roads”, “Access to clean water and sanitation”, “Support for people who can’t work”

The importance of the MY World Street campaign is that we intend to approach those who are rarely focused on, especially in the urban communities, such as shop owners, employees, street sweepers etc. R2R volunteers are very energetic and passionate about this task, hence we have already been able create a fair amount of awareness within the urban community.

R2R volunteers will also be traveling outside of urban areas and reaching out to those who are in marginalized communities to include their voices in the process, making the street campaign more effective and productive.