Amnesty International at the University of Toronto (AI U of T) is a student-based chapter of Amnesty International: a worldwide nonprofit organization which advocates for the promotion and protection of human rights. Amnesty International has no political, governmental, or corporate affiliation, but strives to achieve the universal respect of human rights by targeting specific cases of human rights violations and raising public awareness. The AI U of T chapter mission is to bring awareness to students, faculty, and alumni about human rights violations around the world, and how they can contribute to the campaign and discussion for universal human rights.
Our Departments
1) Events Department: From venues to budget, and from invitees to speakers, our events team is responsible for organizing our in-person and online events – which includes our panels, champaigns, and social events. Members of the events department are truly our “event planning specialists.”
2) Media Department: Our media departments manage and create content for our social media accounts. Our goal is to increase engagement by posting interactive stories, Tiktoks/Reels, and informative Linkedin posts. Our media team is our artistic and creative minds.
3) Publications Department: Our publications department aims to challenge inequalities sentence by sentence, and article by article. They manage our blog, Candlelight, and work on our annual human rights academic magazine. This department consists of researchers, writers, editors, and journal designers.
4) Outreach Department: The backbone of advocacy work is collaboration. Our outreach department emphasizes working together and empowering others. They responsible for (1) connecting with other like-minded clubs and organizations, (2) empowering youth by gathering job, internship or volunteer opportunities for students interested in human rights, and (3) writing educational blurbs for our infographics and online activism efforts in cooperation with our Media Department.
Our Values
- Accountability- consistently striving to reach their goals in a thorough, timely way that they can be proud of, and re-empowering others to do the same,
- Considerateness – supporting their colleagues and trying to find out what motivates them to do their best, and care about co-workers,
- Creativity – continuously looking for new and creative solutions and encouraging others’ ideas so that AI UofT can adapt and succeed in an ever-changing and uncertain global environment.
- Decisive – making sound judgements within their work so that a project or activity can progress with pace and confidence.
- Respectfulness – treating their colleagues with equality and dignity, and assume they have integrity. Valuing the different perspectives of their colleagues as well as their own and showing them that their contributions and expertise matter.
- Equality and Diversity – All of our employees work collectively and individually to promote a constructive and sensitive approach to others from a variety of backgrounds, where the work of all is valued and respected.
- Solidarity – sharing ideas to AI UofT which includes;
- Protection from physical and mental violence;
- Freedom of conscience and expression
- Freedom from discrimination
- Justice for all: end impunity;
- Free prisoners of conscience;
- Safety for refugees;
- Stop the death penalty and torture;
- End political killings and disappearances.
Membership
- Membership in Amnesty International shall be open to all registered University of Toronto students, staff, faculty, and alumni.
- No membership fee is required to become a member of Amnesty International. Rather, members are defined as individuals who participate in the maintenance and preservation of human rights through the work of Amnesty International.
- All members have the right to apply for any given position on Amnesty International’s Executive.
- All members have the right to attend any function or meeting hosted by Amnesty International.
- Structure of the executive committee may change annually, but should always consist of: a President, at least one Vice President, at least one Events Coordinator, and at least one Media Director.
- All executive positions must be elected on an annual basis, in May.
- All other mandates and by-law procedures can be exercised by elected executive members, in accordance with Amnesty International’s core values.
If you are interested in submitting a piece for Candlelight, or getting involved with Amnesty International UofT email us at aiuoft.@gmail.com.