By Derek Hawkins
Blackman Auditorium resonated with the bustle and chatter of a high school dance last Wednesday morning as more than 500 students from Massachusetts middle and high schools filed into the empty floor seats below the stage.
The students, however, were not attending a social event, but the 17th annual Human Rights Leadership Forum, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Sport in Society (CSSS), a Northeastern-based nonprofit.
The forum, titled “Human Rights in Africa,” was the culmination of more than a year’s worth of progress the center and its student volunteers made promoting social justice, nonviolence, tolerance and human rights in their communities.
The students, who had participated in Mentors in Violence Prevention and Project Teamwork, CSSS programs that train high school students to address men’s violence against women and encourage diversity and tolerance in their communities, were honored as leaders among their peers.
“You’ve all worked to prevent violence, to promote the acceptance of difference,” said Peter Roby, CSSS director and Northeastern interim athletic director, in his opening remarks. “You are the ones making the difference, not only in Boston, but in Massachusetts, the country and the world.”
The leadership forum lasted from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m., and included sessions in conflict resolution and human rights, presentations about African culture and society, and an awards ceremony for community service.
But for CSSS, the forum was part of the organization’s broader efforts to expand its role in human rights advocacy nationwide and internationally. At a time when many non-profits and non-governmental organizations, like Amnesty International and Oxfam, have fought for human rights, CSSS is distinct in its use of sport to accomplish similar goals.
Under the umbrella of the Violence Prevention and Diversity department, CSSS employees and volunteers have brought human rights to the forefront of their operation through four core programs, Mentors in Violence Prevention, Project Teamwork, Disability in Sport and Athletes for Human Rights, among other services.
In addition to focusing on the broader concerns of human rights, CSSS, which was founded in 1984, also sponsors urban youth sports through several programs, including the Double Dutch League of Massachusetts, which will hold its statewide tournament Saturday at Northeastern.
Eli Wolff, CSSS manager of research and advocacy, has played a leading role in bringing the center to the international arena, and has contributed to an array of projects that combine sport with a human rights policy.
“There is little articulated in sport and human rights,” Wolff said. “But sport can be a tool to address human rights, as well as health care, employment, poverty and other issues. We try to recognize what about sport helps our society.”
Recently, Wolff participated in the creation and passage of article 30.5 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a resolution written to ensure that the international community upholds sport, recreation and leisure as human rights for disabled people.
Representing the center, Wolff and Elise Roy, the human rights policy advisor to CSSS, helped draft article 30.5 and oversaw the adoption of the U.N. Convention at the U.N. General Assembly in New York last December.
“If human rights is understanding the issues facing the world, then what we’re doing is putting sport into a global framework,” Wolff said. “In reality, it has little to do with disability and more with providing people with opportunity, and upholding these human rights ideals and making them real.”
Locally, Wolff is the director of the Disability in Sport program and co-founder and developer of the CSSS Athletes for Human Rights, a new initiative that aims to make athletes leaders in human rights and social change.
“Athletes get a bad name,” said Dave Hoffman, a training and outreach specialist at CSSS. “Our center exists to take athletes and put a positive spin on their role. For better or for worse, sport is huge in this country, and we can harness it for change.”
Hoffman, a Union College graduate, has worked for CSSS for two years in the Violence Prevention and Diversity department, where he and his colleagues have worked training middle and high school students to confront violence, sexism, racism, homophobia.
“We teach kids the value of leadership and empowerment,” he said. “When you keep watering it like a flower so it can grow, and what happens is the culture of the schools starts to change.”
