Satellite Education
In the late 1980s, Rights and Humanity launched an innovative distance learning programme via the European Space Agency’s Olympus Satellite to broadcast to Eastern, Central and Western Europe. At a time when Europe was still divided by the Iron Curtain, this enabled inter-active participation by people throughout the continent via a live up-link in London.
The satellite had an exceptionally wide footprint allowing it to be used to broadcast simultaneously across Eastern, Central and Western Europe. In April 1989, Rights and Humanity became a founder member of the European Association of Users of Satellites in Training and Education Programmes (EUROSTEP), established under Dutch law.
We were granted free broadcast time on the satellite to pursue our education in human rights and responsibilities. Rights and Humanity was the only humanitarian organisation allotted time on the satellite.
A live up-link at London University enabled us to broadcast live whilst receiving telephone calls from people all over Europe wishing to participate in the debates.
The opportunities for this interactive participation were particularly attractive at a time when face-to-face contact with people living behind the Iron Curtain was difficult and the world-wide-web had still not been established.
During 1989 and 1990, we made seven programmes of 50 minutes each, combining video footage and studio discussion on the human rights implications of current humanitarian concerns.
Satellite Education and Empowerment Project TV Programmes
- Refugees
- Disappearances
- Street Children
- Indigenous Peoples
- Bitter Harvest (on famine)
- Vanishing Forests
- Refugees Updated (incorporate the consequences of the 1st Gulf War)