.:Resource Guides:Human Rights-To Gain Experience or Get Involved Now.
Human Rights
What If I Want to Gain Experience or Get Involved Now?
On-Campus Organizations
Check your student clubs and organizations for possible human rights involvement. Such groups may affiliate with a national or international non-profit or they may focus on issues and populations that exist on campus.
Internships
One of the best opportunities for gaining real-world experience and exploring any field or job is internships. In human rights, these internships are offered by individual non-profit organizations and can be paid or unpaid, full or part-time. In addition to researching
the organization of your choice for potential internship opportunities, visit:
The Human Rights Internship Book (Career Education Institutes. Winston-Salem, NC.1999) also offers internship listings and other resources for searching in this field.
Fellowships
Fellowships in this field are usually one or two year paid opportunities for individuals in a related graduate program. Some large non-profit organizations as well as educational institutions (Columbia Law School) and philanthropic organizations (Ford Foundation) offer
fellowships. Just like internships, you may want to start your research with individual organizations and then check out:
Short-term programs
In addition to internships and fellowships there are other programs that exist for exploring your interest in human rights. Some are short-term, academically based and may involve a fee. Others may be structured more like fellowships with a stipend and geared towards
either undergraduates or graduate students.
A list of these programs created by the University of Minnesota's Human Rights Library is found here.
Volunteer locally
Though all of these programs offer exciting and hands-on exposure to human rights issues and/or work, many human rights advocates suggest you start exploring opportunities in your local community. There are human rights issues all around us. Volunteering in a local
organization or agency working on housing rights, job-training, poverty or gay rights may be your first step toward educating yourself about far-reaching issues and gaining experience you may need to enter the field later.
Jobs
If you are at the point where you want to start looking for a job in human rights work, there are some wonderful websites that list positions in this field. In addition to job postings on an individual non-profit organization or agency web page, the following sites list
just human rights jobs:
