AU-Watch and the ACDHRS APAS inaugural 2020 Session will take place in October in Banjul, The Gambia, alongside the 66th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. This foundational Session will enrol at least 300 high school students from across Africa through a highly competitive application process. Senior AU Watch and ACDHRS staff, Members of AU Watch Governing Council and other African experts will lead lectures, small workshop groups, group discussions and supervise project work in this intensive two-week program. The programmes are designed in such a way to allow students to experience learning in a variety of different contexts, from large lectures to small seminars, one-on-one mentoring sessions and strategic workshops focused on building organizational management, financial acumen and leadership skills. We offer a range of tools, programmes and expertise to support our young scholars to develop into outstanding leaders.

Emphasizing an open, exploratory, and collaborative approach to learning, the three-week APAS programme is also designed to always take place during an important meeting / conference/ session of the AU or its Recs. The idea is our scholars will be on campus for, and being ‘taught’, for two-weeks. The last five days of the last week will be spent in attending the first week of the AU meeting that has been targeted by the APAS programme. Our future AU leaders and scholars will meet, mingle talk and interview attendees of that AU meeting. Some of them will transmit media reports back ‘home’. They will also interview the heads of that AU meeting. After day five, they will meet again for a day or two to synthesise and share experiences of what they have learnt.