Pre-Conference Capacity Building Day

Tuesday 27 January 2009

BIHR's vision is of a society that has become stronger because all human beings are equally valued, can participate fully and are treated with fairness, dignity and respect. An integral part of this is providing people/communities with the information and skills to be able to participate in the decisions that affect their lives.

BIHR is committed to ensuring that the voices of the most excluded are heard at our events. To support this aim, 30 free places were be available for representatives from voluntary and community sector organisations with little or no income to attend a pre-capacity building day (on 27^th January) in addition to the main conference (28^th January).

The pre-capacity building day provided participants with the following: 

• Information and training on human rights (the ideas, the law, the practice), the UK context and links to community empowerment
• Knowledge and skills around how human rights/human rights based approaches can positively influence public services
• Ways of having ‘more of a say' on public services - being an active member of your community
• Skills based training: e.g. campaigning, presentation and questioning skills, working with the media, working with local public representatives
• A space to explore the conference agenda and content, and an opportunity to identify ideas/suggestions on how to ‘change the face of human rights'