The scheme is about investing in GC graduates at a formative stage of their careers. Recent alumni are given the space to test ideas, build portfolios and collaborate across regions — often for the first time as independent professionals rather than students. The result is work that blends research with advocacy, and local engagement with global relevance.
The themes are telling. Environmental justice features prominently, approached not as an abstract concern but as a matter of inequality and accountability. Some initiatives centre indigenous communities in the Amazon and populations in Small Island States, reframing climate change as a question of historical responsibility and global solidarity. Others interrogate child labour, extractivism and supply chains, including in the fashion industry, documenting how children and future generations bear the hidden costs of resource-driven growth.
“I chose this project because child labour tied to ‘helping at home’ becomes invisible, yet the costs—missed school, long hours, hazardous tasks—are real.”
Legal invisibility is another recurring concern. One project examines the status of children born of wartime sexual violence in Southeast Europe, comparing national frameworks to show that reform is not only necessary but feasible. Elsewhere, alumni are producing advocacy toolkits, policy briefs and digital platforms designed to make rights claims legible to decision-makers and accessible to communities.
Several initiatives shift the focus from headline issues to quieter forms of injustice. Unpaid caregiving — often carried by women and rarely recognised as a public concern — is reframed as a question of dignity and rights. Creative communication training seeks to counter polarising anti-gender narratives not with confrontation, but with what one participant describes as “hope-based” engagement. In each case, personal experience informs professional commitment.
Many initiatives will be developed in partnership with Right Livelihood Laureates, linking early-career human-rights practitioners with globally recognised changemakers. The effect is to embed alumni work within a wider ecosystem of practice and mentorship.
“In our project we focus on defenders at the forefront of democratic resilience, facing criminalisation, surveillance and shrinking civic space from Latin America to Southeast Asia.”
The scheme is supported by the European Union and Right Livelihood, whose backing enables these small-scale experiments. Their continued support allows young human rights professionals to experiment, collaborate across regions, and contribute meaningfully to advancing human dignity worldwide by designing practical responses — research reports, legal handbooks, digital toolkits, exhibitions, documentaries and community-based interventions.
Curious to see what last year’s Cross-Regional Alumni-Led Projects produced?
Discover the 2024–25 outputs here
Header photo by Shobhajit Chowdhury, photographer of the photobook Children of the River, which captures the lived realities of children in flood-affected Sirajganj, Bangladesh—one of the selected 2024–25 projects in the Global Campus Alumni cross-regional activities.