Community work
Co-Design a Human Rights Solution with BIHR
In 2021-22, we ran a pilot programme where we worked with different communities to come up with a human rights solution to an issue they face everyday. Together with four partner organisations from different sectors and locations across the UK, we created four final resources which are available below.
Our resources
We are very excited to share our co-designed human rights solutions.
Our community partners
Find out about our work with each of our community partners.
How we made the solutions
From July 2021, BIHR is developing its approach to its work with communities through our new Co-design a human rights support “solution” with BIHR’ project.
This programme seeks to support community groups and voluntary groups to find human rights “solutions” to problems or issues they face. We worked with a small number of partners as a pilot project and are now developing our long-term offer to community groups. Our support is intended to enable groups to address the day-to-day issues where rights are risked, creating positive change within imperfect systems.
Co-design is at the core of this project. Our approach to co-design used a 4-stage process to ensure that the views and opinions of our partners and the eventual end “users” of the solution were central to the development.
Stage 1: Discover
We hosted a workshop with community, campaigning and advocacy organisations across the UK who were interested in working with BIHR longer-term to support their human rights advocacy.
This was session was so valuable for BIHR as a human rights charity, and feedback told us the attendees also found it very helpful to have these conversations and build relationships.
Following the workshop, we received many applications from fantastic organisations who wanted to work with us on pilot projects. We used criteria to score each application and choose the top 4 scoring organisations to partner with.
Stage 2: Define
These partners were then invited to a "Define" workshop to further define their ideas for human rights support "solutions".
Each organisation then worked with a staff member to co-develop plans so that we could start work mapping, developing and testing the solutions.
Stage 3: Develop
We then worked with the four partner organisations to map, develop and test their human rights "solutions".
Stage 4: Deliver
The final step was to publish and share the finished tools!
The impact of these solutions
See below our impact reports on our work with our four partner organisations.
Room To Heal Impact Report Warrington Speak Up Impact Report Hopscotch Impact Report
Want to find out more about our co-design project for working with community groups? Contact the project lead, Carlyn Miller on cmiller@bihr.org.uk.
Our partners
Everyone at BIHR would like to say a massive thank you to our core funders, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Tudor Trust, the Bromley Trust for making it possible for us to explore our work with communities and co-design support solutions that mean we can all make change through human rights, together.
And thank you to our four partner organisations!
The future of these solutions
Following the success of our pilot programme, we're pleased to be able to offer free support to five more organisations to build human rights solutions in 2023. We'll soon be announcing our new community partners.
Related topics
Find out more about human rights and our work in this area.
Where do my rights apply?
Read about some of the areas where human rights are particularly relevant including in health, care and social work; migration and refugee rights; ending violence against women and girls; and LGBTQ+ rights.
Where do my rights apply?
Read about some of the areas where human rights are particularly relevant including in health, care and social work; migration and refugee rights; ending violence against women and girls; and LGBTQ+ rights.
Stay up-to-date
Get our newsletter
Get monthly updates on UK human rights law and our work, resources and events sent straight to your inbox.