Which Way Home?

Amnesty is building a nice relationship with the Glasgow Youth Film Festival . This innovative and growing project features workshop sessions from tv production and script writing through to breakdancing.

My own session was a little more sedate, running an Amnesty workshop after the screening of ‘Which Way Home’ – a documentary film about unaccompanied Honduran child migrants trying to get to the US. Abandoned by parents and society this powerful film follows them on their treacherous journey through Mexico as they try to reach the promised land of the United States.

The film's strength lies in its portrayal of human characters somehow getting by in the face of adversity. That exploration of human behaviour and relationships provides plenty of material for the human rights educator (that would be me) to exercise young minds in the mysteries of a rights-based approach to social issues.

About 100 young people from four different Glasgow schools took part in the workshop, And while initially displaying the traditional Scottish recalcitrance, it soon transpired that young people from (relatively) comfortable backgrounds still have that inate ability to step inside the shoes of others and see life from their perspective.

Discussion focussed on the rights to education, health and well-being that the children were denied, while the group perhaps fostering a growing awareness of the importance of these rights in their own lives.

A particularly productive question asked what items we would take with us if we had to leave our homes and make a journey to another country like the children in the film. It is pretty difficult to choose just 5 things from a list – and the children in the film didn’t even have most of the items to begin with.

All of the children in the film had one thing in common – they were all trying to escape poverty and make a better life for themselves. Who could argue with the right to do that?

Julie Hepburn
Scottish Campaigner
Amnesty International