Promoting Restoration and Capacity Building for Human Rights Investigators is a project funded by the New Venture Fund, Public Interest Technology Network, under the direction of UC Santa Cruz's Research Center for the Americas and at UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center, School of Law. We have a shared vision that people's mental and physical well-being is of critical importance to capacity building for human rights work. Seeking to counter a culture of over-work and exhaustion, this restoration toolkit serves as a reminder that slowing down is to our collective benefit.
Resiliency is an intentional practice we integrate into the lab's curriculum and research because keeping the well-being of the team is central. Andrea Lampros, former resiliency manager of the Human Rights Center Investigations Lab at UC Berkeley, and Nikita Gupta, Resiliency Expert and Trainer based in Los Angeles, have been valuable resources for our UC Labs as we build this practice.
Additional resources and materials about resiliency for human rights activists and researchers will be added to this page as we learn about them.
Below are some materials we use in the Lab.
- UC Santa Cruz Radical Resilence Training Program (an online course on CANVAS open to everyone).
- Start Where You Are: A Journal of Self-Exploration by Meera Lee Patel. Follow #SWYAbook on social media.
- Happier Now: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Embrace Everyday Moments (Even the Difficult Ones) by Nataly Kogan.
- "Self-Care Manual for Feminist Activists" by CREA, a Global South led feminist human rights organization with offices in India and the United States.
- "Healing in Action: A Toolkit for Black Lives Matter Healing Justice and Direction Action" by Black Lives Matter.
