DRH Movement

In 1970, the first Traveling Folk High School saw the light of day in Denmark, the homeland of the famous folk high school tradition. The school was initiated by a group of 8 teachers, who themselves had been traveling around the world throughout the sixties - a highly unusual behavior at the time.

During the first 10 years, the school became a hit in Denmark and throughout Scandinavia. Thousands of young people attended courses with the purpose of traveling, getting to know our planet, meeting and making new exciting friends, and using those experiences to learn about their lives. More than 140 countries were visited and a distance traveled that equals that from the Earth to the Moon and back again over 100 times.

Teachers and students learned extensively about the conditions in many poor countries around the world. It was something of a personal revelation for most of them. Even if the television could and did show pictures of many new and unknown places in the world, they were not usual pictures. So the young travelers in, say Persia or India, in the seventies, were taken aback as almost every detail and no less the full picture came as a surprise, most often making a vast and not anticipated impression.

During the first 10 years every mode of travel was tried out - driving in old busses across Europe and Asia to India, sailing through Europe in small self-made river boats, flying to South America and hiking around, driving motorbikes across the USA, with dog sleds across the ice of Greenland, across the Soviet Union to China with the Trans-Siberian Railway, across the Sahara desert in 4-wheel drives, canoeing through the wilderness of Canada, tandem biking in the Caribbean, etc.

The classic travel took 9 months - 2 months preparations, 4 months traveling and 3 months information work. It took place in old buses rearranged for the purpose. They went from Denmark to India and back via the Middle East. Where they traveled, especially in far away countries, people were surprised. What did these young people come for? Only to ask and listen? To make friends and learn about life in other corners of the world? Bringing their houses on their backs, bringing musical instruments, always keen to try to understand, discuss, sing, meet people and invite them for tea? Indeed a stunning behavior!

The Traveling Folk High School developed its own pedagogical principles - here are some of them: "You must get close to what you want to learn about - the closer you get, the more you learn" - "Only Adam was alone in the world - the rest of us are here together" - "From one place you don't see far- you must be mobile in order to learn" - and "What you learn, you learn double by passing it on to others".

The sixties and seventies was a time where many people across the globe had started moving from a relatively local concept into a more global one. This was called forth in all developed countries by factors like economic growth, better education and the advent of television. Many people in the rich part of the world discovered a reality - old but not widely known and not hardly in detail - of the vast inequalities between people all over the world. People began to realize that maybe this was also their business. The Traveling Folk High School did their share of adding pieces to the puzzle of inequality and the global concept.

The lessons learned were simple: The globe is inhabited by human beings pretty much the same - some poor, some rich - some black, some white - some Buddhists, some Muslims.... but all with a wish to live a good life, in peace, to make a living, get educated, have good health, to raise children, to enjoy and endure, to make a difference and to change things for the better.

Possibilities and conditions were, however, very different. In some places there was enough or more than enough. In other places, even small changes had overwhelming effects and regardless of how hard people worked, they were not able to fundamentally change their basic living conditions.

The constant confrontation with a world where the distance between rich and poor is huge and rapidly growing in spite of a global increase in the level of wealth; piled up a sincere wish to take action and to become part of the solution to this unworthy situation.

It was therefore a natural development to change from traveling and studying the situation in the world to becoming an active force in changing matters for the better. So from 1980 and onward the school program changed from traveling to participating.

It started in small scale - like bringing vitamin tablets to the children in a village in India; or stuff all the warm overcoats that could fit into the trunk of the bus to bring to poor people in Eastern Turkey where the winter could take temperatures down below -40 Fahrenheit (-40 Celsius). It was packing agricultural seeds, donated by the local supermarket, in the rucksack and bringing them to farmers in rural Bolivia. All initiatives came spontaneously from meeting people in need and knowing that you yourself had so much and with the possibility to get hold of more.

It developed into longer periods of 1 - 2 months of stopping over in one place to participate in building a school, a kindergarten or a small workshop with money or materials raised and brought from home.

In 1977, what today is the International Humana People to People Movement was founded by some of the teachers from the Traveling Folk High School in order to create a practical instrument for fighting against the conditions of poverty, disease and distress and working to implement a better way for people to live on the planet in the future.

The Traveling Folk High School in the meantime had grown in numbers, initiated a cooperation with Humana People to People and since 1980, the schools have been engaged in development work around the world. In cooperation, the schools and Humana People to People offer a possibility for ordinary people to take part in development projects in Africa, Asia or Central America. Over the past 20 years thousands of people of all ages and nationalities have taken this opportunity.

Today, 13 Traveling Folk High Schools have joined in a global movement working hand in hand to develop education programs and to offer an opportunity for people to take active part in creating development. There are 6 schools in Denmark, 1 in Norway, 1 in England, 3 in the USA, 1 in China, 3 in India, 1 in South Africa and 1 in the Caribbean.

Humana People to People has gone global as well and consists of 30 country associations running a total of 200 projects. The projects in the developed countries are working with the collection, sorting and selling of second-hand clothes in order to generate funds for projects in developing countries. The majority of the development projects are in Sub Saharan Africa. The projects fall within different lines of work; schools, child aid projects, tree planting and environment projects, HOPE and TCE (Total Control of the Epidemic), which both are projects to fight HIV/AIDS, fundraising projects, or refugee and relief aid.

The projects aim to build people's capacity and skills in being able, through their own efforts, to create a better living. More than ½ million people are directly involved in the projects and many more benefit from them. Since the first Solidarity Workers, as they were initially called, came to rural areas in Africa and put up their camp and started to work along with the people, they have had a great success. Alone, their presence stirred up matters in the communities. In the beginning, the many locals flocked to the building site, attracted by the rumors of these strange white people working. But very soon the Solidarity Workers were taken into the hearts of the community and have remained there ever since. Slowly the people realized that Solidarity Workers did not practice charity or expected any gratitude for their actions - but they simply wished to be regarded as ordinary fellow humans, who put their energy into creating development where it was lacking and expected them to do likewise. For natural reasons, for the sake of solitary humanism and for the same reasons that they would expect help had their own house been on fire.

Many things have changed over the past 25 years - in the world and consequently also in the program of the Traveling Folk High Schools. With the birth of the new millennium, Solidarity Workers became Development Instructors, reflecting the accumulated knowledge and experiences in how to create development.

The students attend the program as part of a team but will prepare for each their individual job to carry out at the project as a Development Instructor. Each Development Instructor gets a job in the line of work carried out by the organization Humana People to People. The projects themselves are long term projects with a permanent staff of local and international project leaders. The Development Instructors are a perpetual input of new energy that is of great value in the development because each contribution is part of an organized and continuous activity.

Development is a phenomenon of many faces and many places. It cannot be patented and there is no ever ready recipe. Each Development Instructor must generate the courage to take an active part in finding answers and in joining the forces of development in the slums of the cities and in the villages in the rural areas where it happens. In the world of reality.