The EarthRights Schools work to create local human rights and environmental activists in Southeast Asia and the Amazon. The first EarthRights School opened in Thailand in 1998, the second opened in Ecuador in 2001. Both innovative programs provide rigorous training in human rights, environmental monitoring and advocacy techniques.
The Schools teach that earth rights promotion and protection are the cornerstones of democracy, which requires an engaged civil society to secure and defend these rights. Through the EarthRights Schools students gain specific knowledge and skills essential to the creation of a civil society, and take this knowledge out into their own communities.
By investing in students for the long-term, the EarthRights Schools help to create a corps of committed defenders of human rights and the natural world.

