Teaching competencies to sensitize young adults for humanitarian issues, to promote their own opinion-building and to strengthen their ability to take action.

Protracted crises, violence, conflicts, natural disasters and regionalised complex emergencies are humanitarian challenges of the current time. Humanitarian education is an important pillar to address such challenges. Thereby, education in humanitarian principles and values contributes to building resilience, social cohesion and peace building.

Successful implementation of education in humanitarian principles and values asks for specific pedagogical approaches to create learning spaces, where young adults can be sensitized for humanitarian issues and encouraged to develop their own opinions on humanitarian issues as well as strengthen their ability to take action. This includes supporting the students to explore their own personal values, refer them to the humanitarian issues and principles, and learn to express their personal viewpoints based on arguments. In addition, the students learn about current scientific theories and relate them to their field of work.

The Diploma of Advanced Studies (DAS) in Pedagogical Approaches for Education in Humanitarian Principles and Values equips participants with the necessary attitudes, knowledge and teaching competencies to implement initiatives and projects focused on education in humanitarian principles and values in their own context. 

Course objectives

The DAS is highly practice-oriented and aims strongly at connectivity between theory, practice and reflection. The course objectives are:

• Acquiring practical and theoretical knowledge about pedagogical approaches relevant for Education in Humanitarian Principles and Values and enabling professionals to use them in their field of work
• Getting to know models and approaches to reflect one’s own values and the ones of others, to learn to deal with possible differences in value orientations and to relate this to the humanitarian principles.
• Working on a concept relevant for Educa­tion in Humanitarian Principles and Values in one’s context (i.e. Conflict Sensitivity, Do No Harm)

 Target group

The course comprises 30 ECTS (750 working hours) and is intended for:

• Teachers/ trainers and teacher/trainer educators active or with an interest in the field of Humanitarian Education
• Actors from the field of Humanitarian Aid (i.e. practitioners, policy makers, researchers)