“After more than 10 months of planning, generating ideas and proposals to conduct the East African Human Rights Program in Nairobi…it’s real…it’s happening now, as a group of six dynamic facilitators are out here engaging in this tremendous discourse with 31 human rights defenders from East Africa on human rights education for action.” So wrote George Gichuki, of the Kenyan NGO Legal Resources Foundation and one of the organizers of the session on his blog on the eve of the 1st. East Africa Human Rights Training Program which took place from September 19 to October 1, 2010 in Nairobi, Kenya. 
A group of 31 participants, from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, working on diverse issues such as land rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, poverty reduction, community development and disability rights came together for the two-week program. It was noteworthy that the setting for this first East Africa Human Rights Program (EAHRP) was in Kenya, which is ushering in a new constitutional order that provides a deep and enabling framework and guiding philosophy for the practice of human rights education in the region. The curriculum design committee, all alumni of Equitas’ International Human Rights Training Program (IHRTP) had prepared content to reflect the common issues of the three countries, including: peace and security, gender equality, identity and civic engagement, justice and conflict resolution. The facilitation team was also entirely made up of IHRTP alumni. Participants left the two-week training session better equipped to undertake human rights education such as training, awareness campaigns, information dissemination and advocacy. 
“The training has done a total overhaul of me. I can’t wait to get back to work.
“The participatory approach will be my anthem”
“The EAHRP is a must attend course because it shapes one’s ideology, knowledge, attitude and more important, practice in relation to what we live in our day to day lives”
Equitas congratulates the consortium of former participants of the International Human Rights Training Program that organized and delivered the session and looks forward to continued collaboration in order to produce a second session in 2012. This program is made possible by financial support from the Canadian International Development Agency.