Poverty Alliance exploring participatory approach to poverty and human rights
/This article was featured in the SCDC Weekly - 18th May 2024.
How can we take a human rights approach to tackling poverty? That’s the question The Poverty Alliance sought to explore working with anti-poverty organisations in a series of action learning sets.
Action learning sets are a participatory approach that allows complex problems to be analysed, understood and acted upon. Part of the Rights in Action project, a new report shares five case studies showing how this approach can explore using human rights as tool for change.
One set explored how they could embed human rights into the way their volunteer-led organisation works, with an action being to invite a prominent anti-poverty campaigner to speak in their community, placing current local issues within a broader structural context. This led to increased volunteering and campaigning on wider political issues.
While the groups faced barriers around the cost-of-living crisis, organisational capacity and funding, all of the set members reported that the process had supported them to advance economic, social, and cultural rights through their work.
A human rights focus is especially pertinent as the Scottish Human Rights Bill, which will enshrine human rights into Scots law, and is due to presented toparliament over the summer.
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