© Humanlibrary.org
Brilio.net/en - Human tends to fear the unknown. Psychologists agreed with these in their various journals. Most fears, including racism, hatred and intolerance are indeed rooted in plain ignorance.
To combat this, education is still the best weapon. But how about those who dont like to read? A human library provides a tool for this.
No, its not a fancy app or a high-tech technology, the idea behind this brilliance concept is mere a human interaction. And a real one it is.
In Human library, instead of checking out books, you can borrow human instead. Yes, for thirty minutes, visitors can loan real people from the library. And in those thirty minutes, readers are invited to explore and read their human books by asking questions and engaging in conversations that are otherwise taboo.
Their collections of humans came from different walk of life. Many are from the group of people that are often neglected and misunderstood. They include, autistic people, transgender, refugees, homeless person and even Muslim. The idea is to open conversation with this group of people. The people who volunteer to be the books will answer whatever questions asked to them and converse openly about their lives & experiences.
As stated in its website, Human library is a worldwide movement of social change. Rather than proceeding with campaigns and petition, they aim to combat racism and counter stereotypes & prejudices by bridging interaction.
First launched in Copenhagen in Denmark, 20 years ago, Human library has now been spread in more than 70 countries around the world.
To celebrate their 15th anniversary, Human Library published a Global Bestseller campaign that features their 7 most popular books: autist, homeless, obese, deafblind, people with bodified body, refugee and transgender.
Ronni Abergel, the founder of Human libray said, When you meet our books, no matter who you are and where you are from or which book you will be reading, in the end, inside every person, the result will say: we are different from each other, we see things differently and we live life differently. But there are more things that we have in common than are keeping us apart."
In the wake of rising raising religious intolerances, hatred towards minority groups including LGBT group, perhaps its time to have this human library coming to Indonesia? Im sure the government wont censor this one, like tumblr.
(brl/tis)
