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End of Grant Report Stories for John Ellerman Foundation

This page contains links to the real life stories and evidence demonstrating the impact of our 2021-2024 core grant from the John Ellerman Foundation. 

HRA Community Advocacy Programme 2022-5

BIHR’s UK-wide Community Programme is funded from 2022 to 2025 by the Baring Foundation. It aims to strengthen the agency and voice of community and voluntary groups to tackle social injustice using human rights, aligning with BIHR’s Strategic Aim 2: Supporting Communities. It has 2 strands that run in an annual cycle:

  1. A series of awareness raising workshops for community groups (between 10 - 15 a year)
  2. An in-depth support relationship to co-develop HRA advocacy tools directly with community groups (between 4 -6 a year).

Below we include some highlights, you can read more about the programme, and the impact reports here

Testimony from 2024 Partners Co-Developing HRA Advocacy Supports

Find out more about community partners we have co-developed HRA advocacy support with

2024 HRA Awareness Raising Community Support

In 2024, we expanded our reach to offer free human rights workshops to 15 community groups across 14 workshops. This included: Aberdeen in Recovery (this workshop was also attended by Caithness Family Support Group); Allies for Justice & Families for Justice; Association for Young People’s Health; ATD Fourth World; Awesta Charitable Organisation; Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living; Bristol Refugee and Asylum Seeker Partnership; Devon and Cornwall Refugee Support; Dudley Voices for Choice; People First Dorset; Rochdale Women’s Welfare Association; Supported Loving; The Traveller Movement; Wyeside Arts Centre. 

Facts, figures and feedback from our 2024 workshops:

4.3/5

was how people would describe their level of knowledge of UK human rights law compared with 2.8/5 before.

4.1/5

was how people would describe their confidence discussing human rights with public services compared with 3.2/5 before.

100%

said they would recommend a BIHR human rights session.

Ambiya Khatun, Organisation Lead at Rochdale Women’s Welfare Association

“Our team at RWWA loved the human rights workshop and feel empowered after Sanchita delivered that session, it was nice to have our concerns regarding accessing and using the provisions validated. We were able to look at the framework in a positive way, and as though it was for ALL humans. Having a case study that focused on an issue that we regularly face was genius. I can see the team are ready to start quoting the duties owed. The narrative has definitely changed.”

BRIL survey response

“Very good well worth doing.”

Diana Skelton, Organisation Lead at ATD Fourth World

“Our group had a wide diversity of learning and communication needs and felt the pace of the workshop was well adapted for all. We very much appreciated Phoebe taking the time to respond thoughtfully to so many individual questions. And it was eye-opening for many of us to understand the role that ombudsmen can play when rights are violated.”

Claire Bates, Organisation Lead at Supported Loving

“It was a wonderful workshop and it was very powerful to hear people with learning disabilities being told about their rights in regards to sex and relationships. This is so rarely spoken about and it was great to have this opportunity to do this together. Thank you.”

Yvonne MacNamara, Organisation Lead at The Traveller Movement

“Attending the human rights training workshop was an enlightening experience that equipped our team with the basic knowledge and tools needed to advocate for justice and equality for Romani and Traveller communities.  This invaluable training will empower us to champion human rights and foster positive change for all.”

Zainab Homam, Organisation Lead for Awesta Charitable Organisation

The event provided an overview of the 16 Human Rights delivered by Carlyn in a highly professional yet exceptionally friendly environment. The immediate outcome has been requests from interested parties across the UK to deliver the same program to their communities. I truly look forward to more similar events covering all aspects of Human Rights for every citizen, besides refugees and asylum seekers across Britain.”

Alan Chalmers, Organisation Lead for Aberdeen in Recovery

“The workshop was very good as some of the people knew nothing about human rights. It gave people a greater understanding about their human rights and, yes, everyone has Human Rights.”

Sarah Offley, Organisation Lead for Dudley Voices for Choice

“From the start of setting up the awareness session it has been an easy and thorough process. Jacob spent time to understand what we did as a charity and what we would most benefit from as a team. As an inclusive team Jacob was able to provide information in a way that could be understood and used by everyone. The session went well and everyone fed-back that they were excited to take their learning into the community and share with our community groups. Thank you for making the whole process easy and so accessible.”

BIHR & Scottish Recovery Consortium's Community Work

BIHR and SRC have been working together to bridge the gap between human rights policy and practice making rights real for people whose lives are affected by substance use. We have successfully delivered our Rights and Recovery Leadership Programme to two Scotland-wide cohorts, and we also recently published a joint resource on 'Using Human Rights in Recovery'.

Our partnership has been hugely successful due to the unique combination of SRC’s 15 years of lived experience knowledge and expertise and ability to connect recovery networks across Scotland with BIHR’s experience over 20 years supporting the implementation of human rights-based approaches.

Stories of change from the Rights in Recovery Programme

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