HRTS 502: NGOs Advancing Human Rights II -- Summer Session 1 2024

HRTS 502: NGOs Advancing Human Rights II

Fully online course, no prerequisites 
7 weeks, Summer Session 1 (May 13 - June 28 2024)

HRTS 502 is a highly practical, creative, interactive class to help students prepare for future NGO careers and learn to research NGO job opportunities that will be of interest based on their preferred work styles. The course addresses practical aspects of non-governmental organization (NGO) management and operations. Students will explore a variety of envisioning, planning, fund
development, and evaluation tools commonly used by NGOs to guide, support, and govern their work. The course also features guest speakers talking about their careers in local, regional, national or international NGOs.

A special focus for the class this summer: The fields of philanthropy and international development—which typically grant funds to NGOs—are garnering criticism for their failures to address deep causes of wicked problems, including poverty, global climate change, migration, human rights violations, and structural violence. Accordingly, we will begin the course with a quick review of critiques and then dive into the issue of who is determining NGO agendas through grant programs. We will closely examine how NGOs can
maintain their focus on mission and vision using other methods of revenue generation, including via social media, donation solicitation, merchandising related to human rights campaigns, making and marketing products related to mission, and fee-for-service provision. Storytelling, narration, and engagement are all part of this mix, along with foraging and hunter-gatherer mindsets. Students can choose to help develop a go-fund-me campaign or other social media campaign to help advance NGO missions, among other possibilities for final projects in the class.
 

Major learning objectives: exploring and applying multi-revenue generation approaches to NGO sustainability; the how-to’s of NGO organizational and project management; and drafting logical frameworks to help with strategic planning and implementation.

Taught by: Mette Brogden, Ph.D., Assistant Prof of Human Rights Practice.
Mette has extensive experience in leading NGO startups, management, mentoring, consulting, evaluation, grant writing, and sustainability planning, in the U.S.,Ghana, Spain and Estonia. She has also served in state government and granted funds to many local NGOs. Please contact her with any questions about the course she is planning for this session metteb@arizona.edu