Tackling injustice and supporting others
Last month I had the opportunity of running advocacy workshops for the Open Society Foundations in Georgia and Ukraine. My aim was to support parents who wanted to advocate for changes to support children better with conditions like autism. The …
Since 2007, I have had the good fortune to be asked to run a session on the Certificate in Campaigning. This superb course, now on its 20th intake, is run by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO). It aims …
There’s a lot of talk at the moment in the UK charity sector about the importance of valuing the challenge from lived experience in both service delivery and campaigning. While people may be talking about it, there is one new …
I have thought a lot recently about what drives and motivates campaigns. When I look back on my campaigning, I know that it was when I had time with people who had lived experience of the campaigning issue that I …
Having written in my last post about how you can overcome the language barrier, I faced a new challenge the other day on a webinar. I was due to run a webinar introducing a simple approach to advocacy for NGOs …
I’ve written before about how campaigning and challenging injustice shows our common humanity. Across the world I have met people wanting to campaign for change. I am interested in how to break through the language barrier to support them. My …
Last month I attended a meeting hosted by Women for Refugee Women and NACCOM to explore the possibility of a new campaign to end destitution. I wasn’t too sure how I felt as I travelled to the meeting. While I …
My last two blog posts have been about destitution, and whilst being a bleak issue, they have made the case for a new national campaign to end destitution. But don’t please get the idea that I think nothing is happening …
Since writing my last blog post, a number of people have asked me: what is destitution? It is a strange almost Victorian term, but I take it to mean a human being who has no income, no home, nothing. In …
No-one living in the UK should be destitute. By destitute I mean having no job, no income, no benefits, no home, nothing. In the sixth largest economy in the world, no-one should be destitute. And if people are destitute, then …